


Meihem Drabbles & Requests

by FunkyMeihem



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Drabbles, F/M, Short Stories, open suggestions
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-04
Updated: 2018-10-09
Packaged: 2018-12-24 01:00:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 36,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12001632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FunkyMeihem/pseuds/FunkyMeihem
Summary: These are all short stories, Tumblr requests, or writing exercises for Junkrat and Mei. Ranging from fun adventures to fun sexy times. ;)





	1. Meihem Marriage

She arrived at the spot overlooking Gibraltar’s cliffside, just like the note had asked her to, at the exact time it had listed, as punctual as ever.

Junkrat was waiting for her.

“I bought a tie!” The words blurted out in a sort of bark, and he cleared his throat in a rather shrill manner.

“I…noticed that!” she mused, the sides of her lips clenching in that way she did so often around him, trying not to laugh. “But traditionally you’re supposed to wear a shirt with it.”

He looked down at where the soot-stained red cloth dangled on his bare chest. “Well they didn’t specify, and I don’t like shirts much anyway! I uh…I know how to make lots of knots, but not tie knots, so Roadie did it for me. And it’s red, because I did lots of research, and in China red’s supposed to be real lucky! Then I tried to look up them zodiacs and match our birthdates like it said. But uh…I dunno my birthday, I usually just celebrate that when I feel like it. So I dunno what animal I am, and I just chose Rat, I figure that might be arright. You’re an Ox, right?” He fumbled about in his pockets, pulling out a folded Chinese restaurant placemat with the zodiac animals printed in cute doe-eyed clip art, where he had drawn several arrows connecting the Rat and Ox, with both surrounded by hearts and small explosions. “It says you can’t fall in love with Pigs, so I don’t have to worry about you and Roadie running off on me!”

Mei squinted at him, adjusting her glasses with two fingers. “I hadn’t…really planned on that? Are you asking for my help with our zodiac? Honestly, I never paid that much attention to it, but if you need help researching something or translating, of course I’ll help you. Is this for one of your projects?”

He coughed, the tie around his neck feeling more and more like a noose with each passing moment, and he wedged his fingers under the neck and pulled at it uncomfortably. “P-project! Yeah! Yeah, I guess it kinda is!”

“Well, what can you tell me about it?” The dimples in her cheeks appeared when she smiled up at him, as helpful as ever. “Erm, Jamison? Are you feeling all right?”

The air suddenly seemed awfully hot and stifling, and he was a man used to hot stifling nights. Was he sweating? He was pretty sure he was sweating. Snatching at the first thing nearby, his fingers found his tie and he wiped at his forehead, leaving behind a new black smear. “I’m feeling great! Never better! I ain’t gonna chunder everywhere, what are you even talking about!?” He swallowed audibly as she eyed him. “What was _I_ talking about?…Uh, the zodiacs, right! So I matched up our animals, and rats and cows go together great, so you’re all clear! Then I tried to think of a good spot, which is why I asked you to come out here. And now you’re here! We’re here, ya know?!”

“A good spot for what? Is this part of your project?”

“Yeah it is. This spot right here, this is where I first tried to talk to you. You told me to go away...”

Her expression fell. “Oh…Jamison, I really am sorry about that. If you’re still feeling hurt about it, I understand. We can talk. I don’t want you to be angry at me…”

The moment her smile turned into a frown, he started screaming inside his head, his gaze blanking slightly. No no no, that wasn’t what he wanted at all! Maybe he’d chosen the wrong spot, maybe he’d screwed up the plans yet again, and this was one plan he couldn’t afford to go off-kilter. Licking suddenly chapped lips with his long tongue in a lizard-like motion, he shook his head quickly, waving both hands. “No! No, it’s fine! That’s the thing, darl. You told me to go away and I didn’t, and I wouldn’t. And this was where I first knew I was bonkers for ya. And then you know how it all went. Heh, you know better than anyone don’t ya?” He gestured around them. “And it’s a real pretty place, and I know you like pretty things, because you’re pretty pretty….uh, pretty. And well, you’re not getting any younger!”

She stared him down and he could have sworn he heard a distant clap of thunder despite the beautiful weather.

“Not what I meant!” He said quickly. “Not what I meant! I meant…You ain’t getting younger because of what happened back in the ice. And me, I dunno how much older I’m gonna get. I don’t know how many years I got left, or how many you got left. But you’re an Ox and I’m a Rat and I’m wearing red and I want them to be real good years, love! I wanna get on your nerves and for you to roll your eyes at me forever, and we can fight a little but not really, then kiss, and make up, and kiss again, and I wanna get a big bed together, and some rooms where we can keep all our shit, and you can paint it whatever color you like, and we can stay there sometimes and then travel other times and be real happy. For years!”

She still looked puzzled, but patiently tried to help walk him through the mess in his head, just like she always did. “Jamison, just…slow down. Take a breath. Tell me what it is you’d like me to do.”

Was this when he was supposed to do it? He figured now was as good a time as any, because he needed to tell her exactly what it was he wanted her to do. He grabbed her hand, startling her a little as he dropped to one knee, the peg joint squeaking loudly. Fumbling with his other hand in his pocket, his fingernails scraped the velvet box and he snatched it up. Pulling it out, he placed it firmly in her open palm. “I dunno if I got this part right but…Mei, _nǐ yuàn yì jià gěi wǒ ma_?”

His accent and shaking, shrill voice completely mangled the syllables, but he was pretty sure he’d gotten it right. Because her eyes widened and she wavered a little, literally going weak in the knees right before him. Well that was no good- he didn’t want her to faint on him after he’d tried so hard. He quickly went to steady her, gripping around her hips, and tried it again just in case. “Want ya to marry me? Will ya?”

She was silent for a very long time before she reacted, her hands trembling as she went to unsteadily open the velvet case. It creaked open, and her smile returned quickly when she saw the most gigantic, gaudiest diamond ring she’d ever laid eyes on. It sparkled from all angles like a disco ball, and she could see the telltale welding marks on the metal where he had made the facets himself. Tucked into the top of the box was a note reading- ‘LEGALLY BOUGHT’, signed by the presences of Roadhog, Lucio, and Hana, just in case. Of course he’d chosen this one. It was as over the top and ridiculous as the man himself, and she loved it at once. Slipping it on her finger, she looked from the crazy diamond, to the other crazy diamond that was staring at her hopefully.

With him kneeling down- he was still SO tall- he was at the perfect height for her to throw herself on him. So that was what she did, flinging her arms around his neck as he uttered a surprised squeak and caught her in both arms as she nearly bowled him over. “Yes! I mean, yes, I will! Oh Jamie, this is just- Yes, yes again!”

His grin widened, embrace tightening around her for a moment, murmuring in her ear. “Was…kinda hoping you would, darl.”

Looking up, he mouthed a faint ‘she said yes’ over to the enormous figure of Roadhog, who was sitting on a crate several yards away and patiently reading a newspaper. Glancing up at him, Roadhog offered a knowing nod and a thumbs up.


	2. Protective Meihem

 

  


 

“N-no! No, it’s fine! It’s…kind of nice?”

Junkrat stared at her, yellow eyes gleaming brighter than ever, his hands clasped and wiggling impatiently. “Do you like it really? You don’t gotta like it! Aw, are you just saying that to make me feel better? I know it’s a trash heap, I hate it, it’s the worst, don’t even know why I ever wanted to head back to this pit, eh? Heh! What a dump!…Do you like it though?”

Mei stood there for a few long moments, trying to find something nice to say about Junkertown. And eventually she settled on a rather meekly stated, “Well! W-well, it’s…a lot cleaner than I thought it would be?” Which was not a lie. It was literally a town made of junk, trash, and spare parts, but at least she wasn’t wading knee-deep in grease and blood like she was afraid she would be. She looked around again, deciding not to comment on an animal that she wasn’t really sure was a rat, a cat, or a dog, (or some mutant creature she didn’t even recognize) that was staring menacingly at her from the shadows of a nearby alleyway, hunched atop an overturned garbage can. “It’s, erm…nice?”

“We can leave, darl. We can leave at any time and I won’t say a thing about it…Roadie, we’re turning around, we’re leavin’!” He did an abrupt about-face, spinning about on his peg, but found his path blocked by the enormous gut of his bodyguard. Roadhog merely uttered a tired sigh, and Mei grabbed onto his mechanical hand to help jostle him back into place, walking ahead. The lanky junker groaned a little, stumbling back into step as Hog placed one enormous hand against his bony spine and brusquely pushed him forward. “Are you sure you don’t mind?”

“Jamison, it’s fine. I never got to see Junkertown proper before, and it’ll be interesting to see where you came from.” Mei squinted at the furry monstrosity in the alleyway and she could have sworn it squinted back at her before slinking into the dark. Shaking her head, she held Rat’s hand and shepherded him along. For the past few hours he had ping-ponged rapidly back and forth between being overly excited to ‘show her the sights’,and bemoaning Junkertown’s very existence as beneath her and how they never should have come here. Several times now he had tried to convince her to leave, only to become distracted by some familiar landmark or favorite hiding spot and drag her towards it a moment later.

The sight was almost comical, the tiny woman barely reaching up to the ribcages of her two giant companions but leading them placidly along the sandy dirt trods that served as their roads. The Queen herself couldn’t have asked for a more imposing set of bodyguards, and so she was surprised to find that the other junkers did not seem afraid of them in the least. They kept clear enough of Roadhog- even the largest and bravest of them didn’t seem keen to tangle with the pig-masked man- but Junkrat was not so lucky. A handful of other junkers had started following them at a distance, and she could hear snippets of their conversations.

“Ballsy of them to show their fuckin’ faces around here again. Especially Rat.”

“Dunno why Roadhog bothers with that one. After everything that happened. Gave up being a Queen’s Enforcer for what?”

“Heh, bet the pig fucks the rat, bet you anything. Why else?”

“Bringing outsiders in here?”

“Hey Rat! Heard you’d died years ago! DogLeg said he found your body lashed to a ‘lectric wire! We held a celebration and pissed on your corpse! Turned out to be an old scarecrow, but nobody could tell the difference, hawhaw!”

At the last man’s words, Junkrat readily whipped around, eye twitching. “Fuck DogLeg! And I bet you did! Bet you all got rotten on your own literal piss while I was off pulling heists and getting seen on the telly all over the world! ‘Cause instead of being dead I’m _RICH N’ FAMOUS_!?”

Mei winced and held out an arm, whispering quickly. “Jamie, don’t. They’re not worth it.”

“They ain’t worth anything!” he spat hatefully into the dirt, his own venom getting the better of him and overflowing his jaws, the taste of bile still rising. “Drongos…Drongos who’d better stop fucking following us if they know what’s good for ‘em!”

Roadhog moved a little closer to them, as if feeling the beginnings of a brawl close at hand. Junkrat had always picked fights he couldn’t win, and the older junker could see his hackles rising despite Mei’s usual attempts to soothe him. A beer can, still half full, went spinning through the air and he moved to block it. The can plonked uselessly off his thick hide, spattering sun-warmed liquid everywhere. Roadhog didn’t particularly care and didn’t react, and Mei merely winced a little as a few droplets landed on her. But his employer had already seen it, and the fuses of Junkrat’s temper lit up all the brighter as he whirled once more to face the group.

“Who threw that!? Who fucking threw that!” He lifted his fists, nearly foaming at the jaws. “Was it you, you dipstick!? You!? Next one of you to throw shit at my mates gets blown sky-high!”

“Jamie, please?” Mei whispered again, as the hyena-like laughter of the junkers got all that much louder. “This isn’t helping. Let’s just go.”

“Did they hit you, love?” He fussed at her with his gloved hand, trying to wipe away the offending droplets from her jacket. “Here, I got ya.”

A female voice hooted from the group of jeering junkers. “He called her ‘love’! What’s wrong, couldn’t get a proper junker woman so you had to settle for that fat little girl?”

A harsh, shrieking snarl ripped itself from Junkrat’s jaws. Mei’s eyes widened and Roadhog was already reaching to stop him, cuffing Junkrat by the harness as the younger junker lunged. He quickly became a whirling ball of fury, teeth gnashing and limbs swinging blindly as he tried to reach the offensive woman, spitting expletives that Mei couldn’t even understand. Roadhog kept a firm grip on him, dragging him back. But the other junkers were already starting to advance, smelling the proverbial blood in the water and ready for the fight that Junkrat was all too willing to take part in.

“Why don’t you let him go, Hog?”

“Yeah, maybe he needs a reminder how things work around here?”

Roadhog reached for his hook with a low growl.

But the entire debacle was interrupted when there was a sharp hissing noise. Mei appeared from behind Hog’s wide gut, having pulled her endothermic gun from its straps on her pack, the tank of cryo-freeze liquid hidden within her rucksack. A blue cloud misted over the group of junkers, bringing with it a wave of biting cold as it settled onto the junkers, freezing and crystallizing as it went. Several of them managed to break free to a safe distance, though not without a struggle and a storm of surprised cursing and exclamations, scattering and retreating back several steps.

But Mei stood where she was, both feet planted as her gun continued steadily freezing one of their number…The junker who had joked about Junkrat being dead. He stood rooted to the spot, his skin an unhealthy gray pallor, blue crystals twinkling cheerfully all over him as his eyes darted wildly, unable to move or even scream. The little climatologist stared at him with something dangerously close to malice, her finger white-knuckled on the trigger.

Before his fellows could move to help him, she jerked the gun upward, a shimmer forming within it before a large and dangerously sharp icicle jutted from the barrel, and she aimed it at the man’s forehead. There was a loud _SSSSSSSSSTHNNK_ — and several of the junkers screamed aloud. A puff of steam drifted away from her blaster, but the man seemed whole enough, though his eyes had rolled back and he seemed to have passed out where he stood. The icicle had sailed mere inches away from his skull, sinking halfway into the wall behind him, the cement blocks forming cracks where it had impacted.

“If there’s one thing I can’t stand,” Mei said a little too softly, “-It’s bullies like you.” 

Everyone stood frozen (some quite literally) as she reloaded her gun, the endothermic liquid bubbling menacingly as she continued. “It’s not my first time in Australia. Last time I was here, I learned that junkers really don’t like the cold. And I’d appreciate it if you stopped trying to fight my friends. Why don’t you all just go away, before someone thinks there’s any trouble here?” She lifted her gun away, jaw still tight and eyes narrowed as her glasses glinted ominously in the light. “Or before there _is_ any trouble here?”

The ice shattered around the frozen junker, and he flopped unconscious to the ground. The others did not bother gathering him up, withdrawing quickly and scuttling off in various directions, abandoning their cohort in the dirt as Mei watched them go. When she was sure they were not going to come back, or at least not yet, she tucked her gun away, brows lifting and features going soft and worried once more. “Oh, that was a little scary!”

“I th-think I just came in my pants a lil’,” Junkrat whispered hoarsely, staring at her.

Roadhog nodded in agreement.

“Well I wasn’t going to just let them be so rude to you! So mean, honestly! Can we leave before they come back, please? You said you were going to show me that Chinese take-away place with the big koala on it anyway.” She dusted herself off and offered a hand out to Junkrat as Roadhog lowered him safely back to the ground.

He darted past her hand and latched onto her like an overly large, gangly-limbed leech, wrapping his arms about her and assaulting her face and hair with kisses as she squeaked and batted at him with both hands. He merely gave her another over-affectionate squeeze, grinning madly down at her. “After that? Darl, we’re gonna get all the bao and beers we can eat. But then we gotta head back out so I can show you my loveshack!”

“…Your loveshack? Really?” She groaned.

“Can even show you my couch where the magic happens. Oh, and I still gotta show you Roadie’s place! And my work bench! And the boom station! And then my couch again! And the secret hidden doors I installed in Roadie’s garage where you have to stand on both of them at the same time to reveal a cunningly hidden secret compartment where we hide our most valuable treasures!”

Roadhog slowly placed a giant hand over his masked face in exasperation.

Junkrat didn’t seem to notice, grabbing Mei by the hand and pulling her forward yet again with, crowing jubilantly. “It’s great to be home!”


	3. Ticklish Meihem

She lay on the floor by the side of the bed, clutching her face near her eye, completely stunned. Her only real thought was a sort of vague relief that she hadn’t been wearing her glasses at the time, or no doubt they would have been shattered. Junkrat’s form loomed as a menacing-looking backlit shadow above her, his arm still raised where he had struck her. The string lights she kept hanging across her ceiling twinkled happily above him, their blue light contrasting with the eerie yellow glow of his eyes. For a moment they stared at one another, and then he descended upon her.

This time his arms looped around her, fussing and fawning and easing her up into a slow sit as he flopped onto the ground alongside her, already rambling. “Didn’t mean to! Didn’t mean to! I’m the most rotten blighter on earth! Why’d I do it?! Lemme see it, love. Please lemme see it. I’ll fix it! I’ll get ice, where’s your ice thingies? I’ll go get Mercy! I’ll get Lucio too just in case! And Ana! Who do I gotta call? Where’s the damn communicators?!”

She sniffled a bit, her eyes watering from where he’d hit her, but she merely wiped at her cheek and turned to him. “Jamison, calm down. It was an accident. I’m fine, really. Look, it probably won’t even bruise.”

He clutched at his face in anguish, biting hard on his own knuckles as if to punish himself where she would not. “Didn’t mean to…”

“Stop that!” she chided softly, going to pull his hand away from his teeth. “Of course you didn’t mean to, that’s why it was an accident. I’m not mad at you. I guess I just…Well, I won’t try to tickle you again?”

They’d been wrestling atop her bed, the same playful way they always had. Though the wrestling was always just a tad one-sided…He was lean and corded with raw muscle, able to gently overpower her every time, and he had been pinning her again and saying lewd things in her ear. So she had decided to play a little dirty, and started tickling the sides of his ribs. Her plans had been to roll on top of him and take the lead. Instead he had visibly flinched, uttered a strange noise, and elbowed her straight in the face before she could even react. She’d fallen off the side of the bed, and he had thrown himself after her not long after.

“I’ll quit Overwatch?” he offered, gingerly wrapping his arms about her. “I’ll turn myself in!”

“Oh Jamie,” she huffed, rubbing her cheek before hugging him back. “Don’t be so dramatic. I just didn’t know you’d have that sort of reaction to tickling.”

“Uh…I didn’t either?”

In a way, she realized it made sense. Perhaps not something she could have guessed at beforehand, judging by the stinging sensation still lingering in her face, but it made sense. He laughed easily and often, but a sense of humor didn’t carry over into something as benign and good-natured as tickling. He was a man who lived a dangerous life, the fuses burning on both ends of his paranoid tendencies. He had told her of what he could remember of his childhood; how he had been bullied, hunted, or ignored, living out his life on the outskirts in the fringes of a sub-civilization like the junkers. Tickling was not something he would be used to when the only thing he expected to be brushing his ribcage was the tip of a knife. Trying to touch him in sensitive areas just to further stimulate his frazzled nerves had been a recipe for disaster.

“It’s okay,” she said a moment later, placing a hand more firmly on his shoulders and soothingly rubbing across them. “You’re just not ticklish, that’s all. Lots of people aren’t.”

“But you are,” he insisted mournfully. “Sometimes I tickle you on accident because you got these spots, and you just flail a bit and giggle and it’s…well, it’s damned adorable, really. You’ve never elbowed me in the face…”

“I am ticklish, but that doesn’t mean you are. Here, just calm down.” She scooted around a bit behind him, lifting onto her knees and rubbing both hands into the firm muscles on the back of his shoulders. She at least knew he enjoyed her massages; when she would straddle the small of his back as he lay on the bed, his arms folded around his face and eyes lolling closed, melting under the firm strokes of her fingers and palms against his back as she worked out the constant tension he bore every day. For a few minutes, even the slope of his low brows and the mad grin of his cheeks would slowly relax, his lean body softened and loosened beneath her touch as she leaned into him. Of course, his twitchy energy or his lust would soon follow eventually, but it was always something they both enjoyed while it lasted. And that was what she did now, rubbing and pressing at his shoulders as his head bowed in defeat, shushing into his ear. “It doesn’t even hurt anymore. We’ll just be a little more careful, that’s all. Are you all right?”

“Yeah,” he murmured, head still down as the stress from before slowly unwound from him, guided by her deft fingertips. “Still can’t believe I got you in the face, though. Direct shot n’ everything. Would’ve been champion if it was anyone but you.”

“Well, at least if any Talon agents try to tickle you, we know you’ll be ready.”

“Oh ha- _HA_ ,” he replied, leaning back into her touch. He twisted slightly, going to run his rough fingertips over her cheek as if trying to erase any lingering pain. “That feels good, love. You promise you ain’t mad at me?”

“Promise.”

“Well, that’s good enough for me!”

A moment later she was being lifted up, hauled effortlessly off the floor and tossed back onto her bed as he crawled back over her, pinning her under him just like he had done before. His nervousness finally driven away, he grinned madly and leaned down to pepper her neck and collarbone with kisses as she began squirming underneath him.

“Now…where were we?”


	4. Meihem First Kiss

“I told you, you should not have been following me! Those awful bombs of yours ruined the inside of that poor bakery!” Mei sat leaning against a brick wall in one of the far back alleys of Dorado, her boots off and one of her leggings pulled up as she applied bandages to some of her scrapes and bruises.

Junkrat sat across from her, back hunched like an angry cat as he tended to his own minor cuts, though with less anti-septic and more ‘spit and dirt’ techniques. He glared back at her, snorting a bit. “And I told you, I just happened to be going in that direction at the same time. We’re both backlines, darl, get used to the idear of having me around. And I don’t believe I’ve gotten a thank you, yet. So I’m just gonna say ‘you’re welcome’ in advance.”

“Who are you expecting a thank you from, the nice family whose building you blew up?”

“So you’re not even going to mention the what, four or five mercenary blokes what had you cornered in there? I saw you ducking in that bakery to reload. What were you gonna do in the meantime? Bash ‘em with baguettes? Sock ‘em with sourdough? Pulverize ‘em with…with…”

Mei thought for a moment, “Pumpernickel?”

“Yeah! Thanks, love.” He spat on his gloved palm, wiping away a rivulet of blood from his knee. “And again, you’re welcome, for getting those drongos off you.”

“I had it under control, actually. You didn’t even bother to ask before you set them off,” she huffed, wincing a bit at the sight of him tending to himself. His knee was still bleeding profusely, and the spit certainly was not helping. “Would you stop that? It’s unsanitary. Here.” She ignored his grumbles as she pushed at him a little, shooing his hands away as she knelt in front of him, rummaging through her belt and pulling out more fresh gauze. Ripping open the packages, she began winding it around his leg, the white staining slowly with pink as it settled over the gash. Wiping at her hands, she sat back to inspect her work “There. Why can’t you just be more careful? With everything.”

The bleeding junker folded his arms petulantly. “Well excuse me, your hoity-toity highness, but I’d rather have seen a few knocked over chairs and some spilled dipping sauces, than seen your beautiful brains splattered all over the menu signs. You’re welcome.”

She scowled back at him. “Well maybe I don’t want to see your other leg fall off because your idea of medical treatment is smearing saliva into everything! This should at least help until the others arrive. So…you’re welcome.”

“You’re welcome.”

“ _You’re_ welcome!”

“ _You’re welcome_!”

“ _You’re welcome_!”

They were soon shouting it in each other’s faces, before Mei finally closed her eyes and held up a hand and turned to look away, taking a deep breath. “No, no, I am not going to be this immature.”

With his gangly limbs still folded up like a spider, arms draped across his knees, he gave her a leering grin. “What, you don’t enjoy a good pissin’ contest with yours truly? I thought this was kinda our special time together. This is like,” He gestured to himself, then to her, back and forth. “Our _thing_.”

The look she gave him was a little wary, starting to roll her leggings back down and reaching for her boots. “We’re supposed to be a team. We can’t be fighting.”

“What, you and me, actually fighting? This isn’t fighting. We’re not _fighting_ , like fighting. Hell, I couldn’t really fight you.” He rocked back and forth where he sat in a rather giddy way, yellow eyes burning in the shadow of the alley’s buildings. “This. This is flirtin’.”

Her face went red, adjusting her glasses. For a moment her coat felt entirely too hot, and she would have started to remove it in any other situation than sitting here, in a back alley, with a junker who had always been entirely too happy to squabble with her. And no wonder he’d gotten such a ludicrous idea, when she was far too eager to get snippy with him at any opportunity. She looked for something to busy herself with, and began fiddling uselessly with the dials and buttons on her endothermic blaster, which had already been set correctly some hours ago. When she did speak, her voice didn’t sound right. “This isn’t…We’re not…We are both professionals here, Mr. Fawkes.”

“Oh! A pro-whatnow? I thought I was just a no-good bully?” He said slyly, and his grin only widened at the look he received.

He had her there, and they both knew it. From the very day he had arrived, she’d never been particularly polite to him, and it had been so unlike her. “Well,” she answered stiffly. “That was an admittedly unprofessional thing to say. If you want, I can apologize-”

“Nah, you apologize for everything too much already. Sorry this, sorry that. I saw you apologize to a microwave door once because you shut it too hard, it was really cute. You don’t gotta apologize to me. Besides, like I said. I like it. All this arguing we do, I’m just takin’ the piss!”

She squinted. “If you need to do that, you can go-”

“Nah! Nah! I mean takin’ the piss, just messing with you! Flirting with you a bit, yeah? That’s what we do, you and me.” His long arms folded one more around his knees, the joint of his peg squeaking as he leaned to inspect the bloodied gauze on his good leg. “You know I’d blow up anyone who’s dumb enough to go after you while I’m nearby. And see? You did me this nice bandage patch-job while we were shouting at each other and everything, it’s ace. D’you even know what you look like when you shout? It’s all cute and puffy. With your puffy coat and your puffy cheeks and your puffy lips-”

“I am not puffy!” she protested, even as she felt her cheeks puff just like he’d said.

“Aw, see, we’re in another spat again already. Wanna get to the part where we kiss and make up?” His bushy brows waggled up and down.

She looked back to him, face still burning behind her glasses, and she noticed his cheeks were flushed too, staring back at her. “That’s…crude.”

“Yeah, but do you wanna, though? Or we can keep fighting like cats and dogs. Honestly, I’m good with both! Just kinda, ya know, leaning towards the kiss part.”

“You probably taste like smoke.”

“So…you’ve wondered, then?” There was that infuriating grin again, with his gold tooth glinting on one side. “Bet you taste like peaches, bet you anything. Wanna find out?”

Her lips tightened until they were nothing but a thin line. Her coat was definitely too hot. Everything was too hot; the coat, the weather, and especially the situation with the Australian bomber sitting across from her. Just because he was incapable of being professional, didn’t mean she had to stoop to…to _junker_ levels. The professional thing to do would be to shut this nonsense down immediately. They were just teammates after all, sent out on the same missions, taking care of the backlines together, seeking each other out and squabbling whenever they could, and very much alone in the end of a dark alley…

“You ain’t said yes or no, love,” Junkrat urged gently, never comfortable with long silences.

She hadn’t. For a few moments longer, she stared at the cracked cement and scattered pebbles on the ground before murmuring a soft, “You’d tell.”

“I wouldn’t! What d’you take me for? Even I know when to keep my gob shut, if you want it shut. This is just for you and me, Snowflake. Just us. Swear it.”

She glanced around, as though expecting to find either Talon agents or her own teammates coming through the very walls at such an inopportune moment. But when her suspicions abated, she straightened her shoulders and faced him as proudly as she could. “Close your eyes.”

To her irritation, that was exactly what he did. He giggled his shrill laughter, clamped his hands over his mouth to try and stifle it, and closed his eyes…opened them again, peeked, closed them again, several times, before finally closing them a final time as he waited. He hadn’t even hesitated. Really, she could have done anything at that point. She could even have simply stood and walked away, leaving him with his eyes shut and waiting for something that would never happen.

Instead she leaned forward, carefully navigating the tangle of his legs, and very hesitantly placed one finger on his chin. She heard him inhale sharply behind his smile, a hiss between his pointed teeth, and she could almost see the battle going on inside his head as he tried to keep his eyes shut, fluttering madly under their lids, the tips of his pale lashes singed and black. His lips drew forward from his bared grinning fangs, pursing slightly, and she could tell it was taking all of his minute amount of patience to stay still. Closing her own eyes, she tilted her head and leaned forward, pressing her lips to his. It wasn’t a particularly long kiss, just barely long enough to be anything considered beyond a peck. And no tongue, she made very sure of that. Just a quick touch of their lips together, even as fireworks seemed to set off between Junkrat’s ears and his body seemed to melt in a boneless way against her. She held him steady, keeping him in place, stilling him just for this brief and ill-advised kiss of theirs.

As she drew away from him, she let the tip of her tongue rest against her bottom lip. It felt strangely hot to the touch. He did taste like smoke, just like she’d expected; a bit like a campfire that had been left to smolder, when the wood was black and gray on the outside but still red hot on the inside. And when she licked her lip again, he tasted like a sunburn mixed with a fever, with gunpowder sprinkled on top.

And…oh, he’d definitely had a lychee boba tea that day too. She recognized that flavor anywhere.

His eyes fluttered open as she leaned back from him, his dilated pupils narrowing back to pinpricks of black as the light hit them. He ran his own eerily long tongue along his lips, slithering like a pink snake as he wiped them clean before drawing back in for the taste. With a little smacking noise, his expression lit up, looking just a bit too satisfied for her liking. “You really do taste like canned peaches! Oh, that’s real sweet…I knew you’d be a tasty one, I always knew it.”

She sat back, staring into his strange citrine eyes, rings of unnatural yellow around black centers. She didn’t really have any idea what he was talking about- she hadn’t eaten peaches lately, anyway- but it was over and done with. Now she knew. They both knew. And this didn’t have to be repeated any time soon.  Even with the heat slowly fading from her lips and knowing his lips were still so close, and she could have leaned forward and tasted it all over again. And he was still leaning forward towards her, she could just-

She shook her head clear, pushing her glasses back up her nose and straightening up. Now it was more than just her lips burning. “There. S-so…now we know…”

“Yeah…” He tilted his head at her in a strange way, and his gaze had changed again. He looked like he sometimes did before entering the battlefield, as if he seemed to be calculating something, those mysterious rapid-paced thoughts of his still whirring away in his brain. Maybe he wanted more too but was just giving her the space she seemed to need. When she retreated, he didn’t pursue, leaning back on both lanky arms as he regarded her thoughtfully. But it didn’t last long. Before she could even move to stand, he had found another cut on his elbow and was preparing to rub more spit and dirt on it. “Hcckf!”

“Would you stop doing that! Here!” She grumbled aloud, reaching back into her belt for yet more gauze, this time just tossing it into his lap for him to tend to himself.

He grinned up at her. “Thanks, Snowflake.”

“You’re welcome.”

“No, _you’re_ welcome.”

“You’re welcome!”

“ _You’re welcome_!”

She offered a hand to help him up after he had tended to his cut and he took it, hauling his spindly form up to loom over her as usual. Still shouting pleasantries at one another, the arguing pair started off back down the alleyway to join the rest of their team.


	5. Sleepover (NSFW)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (NSFW)

The wind was howling outside her tent, although the snows had not yet started. But she almost preferred the snow. It was soft and clean and could be manipulated into barriers and walls to shield her and her friends from the the storm. But here on the steppes, there was nothing but rock; bare and gray and cold rock, scrubby and scratchy plains grass, and that awful screaming wind. The temperatures had plummeted after the sun had dropped, and the only things keeping her and the rest of the team relatively comfortable were the scattered tents and the climate control fields that shimmered around them to keep the heat in; technology fighting against nature.  
  
She wasn’t sure if the others were asleep…Or, well, Reinhardt was definitely asleep, and snoring so loud that he could be heard above the winds. Likely the others were trying to rest as well, with how late it had gotten. The only ones she knew were awake was herself and the junkers. And she knew because she could hear them in the tent next to hers, and they were fighting again. It was muffled, but she definitely heard Junkrat’s high-pitched voice snapping and snarling, and the much lower, rumbling tones of Roadhog for the few times he chose to answer. Rolling her eyes, she put on a pair of headphones and tried to block it out. The fighting continued, and she looked up a few times when there was a crashing and ripping noise, but decided it was best to remain in her own cozy tent, playing her music and looking over her notes.  
  
“ _Caught a kinda fever, whenever you’re around_ ,” she sang softly, a little off-key and under her breath, “ _Can’t fight the way that you mess with my temperature…Uh-oh, can’t believe it-_ ”  
  
There was a rattling ‘knock’ at her tent, the fabric denting and rustling, and a familiar “Oi, Mei?” at the door.  
  
She closed her eyes briefly, sighing before removing her music and adjusting her pajamas, going to unzip the door enough to peek out. Sure enough, Junkrat stood just inside the faint glow of the climate field, hunched a little to fit inside, holding a tattered sleeping bag. He was dressed in nothing but a pair of smiley-face print pajama pants and shivered constantly as he gave her a look that was both miffed and perhaps a little pitiful, sniffling and wiping at his nose with one arm before announcing, “I’m sleeping with you tonight.”  
  
“Excuse me?”  
  
“Gonna share a tent, yeah?”  
  
“It’s late, Jamison, go back to your own tent.”  
  
“Uh…” He gestured behind himself; there in the dark, was the ripped up and thoroughly broken and stomped-looking remains of Junkrat’s tent, strips of fabric hanging from the broken poles at odd angles, and the climate field generator was nowhere to be found. “I can’t?”  
  
She gave him a baffled look, palms up in an imploring manner. “What on earth happened?”  
  
“…I dunno.”  
  
She sighed. “Okay…Well, you need to try and get some rest…Go sleep with Roadhog, then.”  
  
“No!”  
  
“Jamison-”  
  
“No. Me and him are havin’…a gentleman’s disagreement.” He rubbed at his jaw ruefully. “But you know me, darl. I’m the bigger man! …I mean, in a metaphorical sense of course, don’t think anyone’s actually bigger than old Roadie. But this time I’m the bigger man, and I _choose_ not to pursue this further with him, because _I_ don’t want to,” he insisted, refusing to look back at where Roadhog’s intact tent clicked its light off. “Besides. There’s no room in there with him, and you smell better. Think of it as an unscheduled sleepover! We can pillowfight, make mixed drinks, judge lingerie, compare tits, all that stuff what goes on at lady sleepovers.”  
  
For a moment she wasn’t sure if she should be amused or offended, but amusement won out. “You’ve never been to a real sleepover, have you?”  
  
He grinned, wiggling his brows. “I’ve seen ‘em on videos!”  
  
“I’m sure you have. All right, come on. But this is just for tonight, we’re definitely getting you a new tent tomorrow.” She rubbed a hand down her face before finally shaking her head, unzipping the tent flap the rest of the way and inviting him in.  
  
His grin widening, the junker bent his long spine and ducked down to get inside, waiting for her to move her notebooks and piles of belongings so that he could unfurl his own sleeping bag next to hers. He made a show of it, flinging the bag open and whirling about before throwing himself inside as the thick cloth settled over him, snuggling his pointed nose into his pillow. Mei sat up, leaned over to place a small kiss to his forehead, then leaned and clicked off the lantern.  
  
They lay there in the dark for less than a minute before she heard him shuffling impatiently, then the mechanical creak of him fumbling with his mechanical leg (He had insisted on sleeping with his prosthetics on more often lately, on one of his paranoid tears about ‘being ready’), and the familiar sound of him trying to adjust his pillow. She waited for it…  
  
“Oi. Mei. I can’t sleep.”  
  
With a sigh, she rolled over to face him. She’d been expecting as much. “All right, come here. But you really should try to sl-”  
  
He was already unzipping her sleeping bag in a flash, not bothering to zip it up after him as he latched onto her from behind. “You’re the best, darl. Hey, wanna kick this slumber party off right? Wanna compare our tits?”  
  
“Jamison, I swear. Go to sleep.” She rolled over and closed her eyes. But she could still feel him fidgeting, still alive with nervous energy. And truth be told, she had been up late as well and she wasn’t really that sleepy herself. Drumming her fingers once or twice, she turned her head a little, feeling his breath rustling her hair. “Besides, we don’t actually do that at sleepovers.”  
  
“Well why not? If I had a pair as ace as yours, I’d show them off to all and sundry. What d’you do instead?” He snorted in her ear.  
  
“Well we’d watch movies, order in food or eat popcorn, stay up late, talk about what had happened at school or who we had a crush on…”  
  
“Did you have a crush on me, darl?!” He squeezed her a little tighter.  
  
“I didn’t know you then, remember?”  
  
“Oooohh, right.”  
  
“You um…you weren’t even born yet, I don’t think,” she said hesitantly, before burying her face in both hands and shrinking away from him. “Oh my gosh, I keep forgetting how…the age thing…and the cryostasis…”  
  
“Nooo no no! Come on, knock off with that again.” He followed her across her sleeping bag when she retreated, arms wrapping around her once more. “You’re here with me now, having a real Junkrat style slumber party all our own. But really though, the tit comparisons, you’re sure they’re not real?” He squeezed his grip around her, walking two fingers up towards her chest in a bid to distract her.  
  
“It’s not like that! It’s a lot more boring than, um…popular media would portray?…” She squirmed a little and batted at his hands.  
  
“…Wanna try a round of it, then?”  
  
“You are absolutely silly, you know that?”  
  
“All right, let’s see.” He shuffled around behind her, and she leaned slightly as she felt him pat at his chest with one hand with a low, “Hmmm!” before he reached back around her, squeezing his arm under her side…and abruptly seized onto both her breasts through her sweatshirt, squeezing roughly. “Oh! Nope, you win!”  
  
Her cheeks reddened a little, elbowing him softly where she could reach. “Jamison!”  
  
“Hold on, let me check again,” he grunted in her ear, rolling them through the warm fabric, starting to kiss at the nape of her neck as he toyed with her ample chest, tweaking playfully with one hand. “Okay, nope, you’re still winning. I thiiiiiink…Kind of hard to tell through the sweats…”  
  
“Jamie…” Her voice had gone a little softer, a little more breathy.  
  
“Mei?…”  
  
Her head shifted just slightly atop her pillow as she ever so hesitantly arched her back up into his waiting palm.  
  
That was all the permission he needed.  
  
***

* * *

  
  
Faster than she could even comprehend, he grasped the bottom of her sweatshirt and yanked it upward, pulling it up and over the wide span of her chest, waiting until she lifted her chin and arms so that he could shuck it off. It wasn’t entirely gentle; the impatience behind his movements was clear as he ripped it the rest of the way off her; her skin prickling into gooseflesh at the relative chill of the night air enveloped her. She almost rolled to face him, but found his hand landing firmly upon her shoulder instead, stilling her movement and holding her in place. One long, lithe muscled arm reached across her, sliding across her ribcage as the calloused tips of his fingers tickled over her side.  
  
“Mm…” He grunted into her ear again. “Never get tired of these tits…”  
  
His fingers spread apart and seized one breast, pulling her in against his bony chest as he began massaging roughly at the plush flesh. Despite his hand’s larger size, their softness still overflowed his grip as he rolled it under his palm, feeling its weight as he caressed and fondled. His first fingers scissored together blindly, eventually finding the harder, pebbled nub of pink- laughing softly into her ear in delight as he began pinching and tugging, feeling them harden further under his touch. Despite his frantic nature and tendency for shaky limbs, he’d always been good about delicate bits; whether that meant tightening the screws in a tiny divot in his latest explosive device, or manipulating the sensitive and tender little buttons on the woman beneath him. And it seemed to be working, Mei squirming and writhing quietly against him, her head bowing with a little gasp as she tightened her thighs together, rubbing to soothe the heat that was growing warmer between them.  
  
With one slow motion, he guided her to roll onto her stomach, laying flat at he came to rest atop her. For a moment she couldn’t help but tense as his weight settled, solid and heavy- yet careful not to crush her as she was pinned firmly beneath. She fit perfectly against him, pressed together in every curve, skin against skin. It was like she had been made just for him. The arc of her spine was flush to his chest, his bony hips nestling just below the swell of her rear, where they could both feel the hot bulge of his erection aching and straining through the thin fabric of her pajama pants. He was so large compared to her, stretched tall astride her as his hand slid up to tangle in the back of her hair, pulling just to the point of stinging as he pulled her chin upward.  
  
His breath was heavy against her ear and the back of her neck, trailing his lips across hear earlobe, sharp teeth scraping at her jaw, not truly kissing her. It was almost strange, him being this close without kissing her. When she tried, his grip tugged hard on her hair until she hissed, straightening out under him once more. Excitement tingled under her skin at the force of it, just enough to sting without truly hurting, that little reminder of the terrifying strength she knew he held. He was a wild creature, capable of chaos and violence; yet could also handle her with surprising delicacy, like she was a precious thing he couldn’t risk breaking.  
  
He was being careful with her, she could tell, as the warm grip of his flesh hand slid down from her hair- down, down, all the way down across the length of her body- and into the elastic of her pajamas. She lifted herself just slightly as his lithe fingers pushed insistently into the gap between her hip and belly, slipping beneath her and in between her legs. Within moments they found her slit and the inconspicuous bud of pink at its front, the pads of his fingers curling deftly as he began to stroke at the opening, slicking the tips of two digits while his thumb found the nub of her clit and began to toy in slow circles.  
  
“Yeah, you like that, darl? Heh. Don’t even need to say anything, can hear it in your breathin’.” He growled against her ear, and grinned when she couldn’t stifle a small whimper. “Mm, just like that, make those l’il noises I like, the ones you make just for Junkrat…”  
  
She whimpered on cue as his fingers spread apart, opening her up and slipping ever further in.  
  
Her own fingers tightened into the fabric of her sleeping bag, uttering a barely audible moan as his head dipped down and rough lips found the curve of her throat, tongue tracing the vein where her blood surged with every pound of her rapidly beating heart. She bared her neck willingly to his attentions, beginning to squirm beneath him as much as his weight would allow, lifting her hips further as his fingers pressed deeper inside her, working deeper into her wet heat. She jumped a little when a low hissing growl uttered from his throat, apparently growing frustrated at the elastic of her pants, lifting off her just enough that he could impatiently pull them down, leaving them strung around her knees. But when she tried to move to help he bared his teeth and pinned her again, his weight pushing her back down, and she stayed there.  
  
“Hold still,” he whispered.  
  
When he straddled her again, there was nothing to separate them as his narrow pelvis settled comfortably between her thighs, nudging her knees a little wider and holding them in place. He seemed to ignore her little whine of desperation when he withdrew his fingers, shining wet in the dim light as he admired them- before leaning down by her ear again, letting her hear him when he slipped them into his mouth, audibly sucking them clean. He heard her gasp when he withdrew them with a little pop, and brought both hands down on either side of her, supporting him as her nudged her knees further apart. Without that annoying fabric in the way, he could really feel her now. She was nice and wet -exactly how he wanted her- and the heat between her thighs was warm and ready, waiting just for him.  
  
“J-Jamie…” Her voice was pleading. She tried moving her hips a little, unable to do more than rub herself a useless inch or two against him, panting heavily already.  
  
He lifted off her to wrap one hand around the straining girth of his cock, positioning himself at her entrance. She braced herself, feeling him press the blunt, swollen head against her opening… but he didn’t thrust forward, didn’t give her what she wanted. He pushed forward only a bit, dragging himself in circles around her soft, sensitive lips, parting them to glide the length of him back and forth within them and occasionally slipping forward into her, just an inch or two. Her moisture coated him in such a marvelous way as he rubbed and humped against her, toying with her and feeling her squirming grow more anxious.  
  
“Oh, did y’want something?” He asked.  
  
She could tell he was grinning, could hear it in his voice. _What a jerk._ But she did want it, and wasn’t above asking for it. “Jamie! Yes…Please, I want it…you…”  
  
Satisfied, Junkrat guided himself back into place, pushing slowly forward until the head of him vanished inside. His lanky back hunched over her, every bony vertebrae visible as he made one swift jab with his hips, hungrily sheathing himself inside, gliding through like moistened silk until he was seated fully within. The noises she made, guttural and primal and so very unlike her normal polite self-control, made all the teasing worth it.  
  
She was still pinned beneath him, unable to move her hips as he took the lead, pulling out with a shallow quickness before thrusting again, his hips slamming into the pillowed flesh of her rear. He lost no time in setting the pace, hips snapping to and fro as he rode her into the ground, her little body jolting against the thick fabric of her sleeping bag. She moaned aloud before bringing her hand to her mouth, stifling herself so she could moan again. He paused breathlessly, his hand seizing hers and dragging it from her lips before snatching the other as well, stretching both her arms up above her head and pinning her by the wrists before he continued his relentless thrusting.  
  
“Nuh-uh. Lemme hear ya…” He punctuated his words with a particularly sharp snap of his hips. “I like hearing ya.”  
  
“But, the others will h- aah!” Her soft voice lifted into a cry.  
  
“Heh, what, hear that? Or this? How about…” He ground himself into her, hitting that spot somewhere deep inside her that he knew she liked. “This? Or this?…Or, oh, _right there_ …”  
  
She could no longer protest, her eyes rolling back as she made noises that would have shamed her more-aware self. Was she drooling? She might have been drooling a little, the side of her face smushed into the wet sleeping bag. His cock felt like it was splitting her in all the best ways, a blunt pressure in her belly that set off lights behind her vision and blurred everything around the edges.  
  
He collapsed on top of her, almost knocking the air from her lungs as his bony chest landed on her back, holding her wrists so tight that they must have been bruising; his hips pounding and smacking between the back of her thighs. “Soft!” he moaned aloud with her. “S-sooo soft…so good…”  
  
It hadn’t been long at all, but Mei could feel herself unraveling already. This was going to be quick and dirty and deep; and if she still had her wits about her, she might be blushing later when he inevitably brought it up again. She recognized her own voice somewhere in all the noises he was making, and realized she was speaking to him as she drooled and groaned against the ground, whining encouragements in slurred Mandarin, and he clearly had no idea what she was saying… and neither of them cared.  
  
“Gonna cum…Gonna fill you up, darl. Gonna cum!” He wheezed into her ear, warning her as his bony hips slammed steadily inward.  
  
She couldn’t really manage anything more than an embarrassing little ‘nneuugh’ noise, mewling aloud. She felt overheated, burning inside and out, her back slick with the sweat dripping from him, and could feel his flames threatening to engulf what little remained of her senses. His cock still relentlessly jackhammered into her, pushing until it felt like she might break in two; hitting that spot just right, over and over and over again… _Just a little more…just a little more…_  
  
His back stiffened and straightened, then coiled again, as his sharp teeth snapped open and came down on the side of the meat of her shoulder, biting down hard enough to make her wail. She jolted and tightened around him, squeezing and pulsing around every thick inch as he rammed forward as deep as he could go. For a moment he simply blacked out. Nothing else in the world mattered at that moment, nothing but Mei and that urge to fill her with everything he had, every last drop of cum; useless as it might have been, even if it never made her belly swell. _Fill her up…Fill her up. Hot and gooey on the inside…_  
  
“Yes!” He gasped into her neck, shivering from the aftershocks of his peak. His tongue lolled from his jaws, lathing and soothing his bite mark, tasting like her sweat and a drop or two of blood where one of his canines had pierced through. Whoops. Best he didn’t mention breaking the skin.  
  
She panted beneath him, limp and pliant, and he finally and reluctantly rolled off her. Cold air bathed them where they had been hot and sweaty against one another, though neither of them moved for a long while. She recovered first, pushing wisps of hair from her face as she rolled to face him, nudging his arm up and nestling in against his heaving chest. “Jamie. Are you all right?”  
  
“Y-yeah. Just…Just gimme a tick, love. Bloody hell, that was…” His grin had turned goofy and content, not bothering to wipe away the sweat still beaded on his reddened face. The air was still thick with the smell of sex and for the moment he was fine with relaxing in the afterglow. It was one of the only times ‘relaxing’ could ever really apply to someone like him. “Yeah, that was good. Best slumber party I been to in ages. Just…gimme a sec.”  
  
She traced her fingers along the side of his ribs while he caught his breath, squirming a little and making a face when she felt the familiar sensation of his seed leaking out of her, staining the sleeping bag beneath her. With a sigh, she closed her eyes, nuzzling against him and letting him rest. His breath had turned slower and more steady and his usual twitching had stopped. Smirking, she leaned up onto his chest to whisper a soft, “I’ll admit it…That was a very nice sleepover. I mean, it wasn’t really like the sleepovers I’m used to. But probably more like the ones you were imagining. But still, good. Very good. Jamie. Jamie?”  
  
He answered her with a soft snore where he had finally collapsed asleep.


	6. Supposed To Make You Feel Better

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> SadFic but also FunnyFic?
> 
> ???

“Fuck you.”  
  
“…Sir?” The convenience store clerk, an omnic with a single square eyelight and a paper hat that had been taped to his shiny chrome dome, paused as the items on the moving belt beeped steadily over the scanner. “Is there a problem with your service today?”  
  
The lanky man at the counter narrowed his eyes under the brim of his baseball cap, practically baring his teeth. “I said, fuck you. Judging me like I don’t damn well know it. Well, I’m onto you!”  
  
The omnic played a recording of a polite cough, pulling open a bag. “I apologize if service has not been found satisfactory, sir. As for judgment, I assure you that your items are not out of the ordinary, nor do I have the capacity to-”  
  
“Judging me because of what I’m buying. Not like a goddamn bot like you could understand it anyway. For a biological process, this is. Not like a scrapheap like you knows anything about it. It’s all natural, and it’s nothing to be ashamed of! Yeah! How about you keep on baggin’!”  
  
The omnic’s eyelight flitted to the tall, lanky man in the rumpled hoodie and cap, who stood towering over him in a rather menacing way. Between him and his friend, an even larger and gigantically fat man with a scarf over his lower face, dark glasses, and another low-set baseball hat, the service bot was not entirely sure that the authorities could arrive in time if the two became violent. And the smaller of them definitely seemed close to violence. And when the nervous omnic accidentally clanked two of the bottles together in the bag, the skinny man started spitting more expletives and attempted to climb over the checkout counter.  
  
But the even larger man shot forth one huge hand, nearly enveloping his partner’s torso and pulling him back, before uttering a low rumble of disapproval and pointing towards the bag. He didn’t say anything the omnic could make out, but the smaller one seemed to understand. He snarled something under his breath, slammed a payment card through the machine, and snatched up the bags before storming away.  
  
“Have a nice day, sirs,” the service bot called, as his manners protocol demanded.  
  
The skinny man tried to flip him the bird in reply, though the weight of the bags made it difficult. “No! I’m gonna have a rotten day! How about that! Fuuuuuck yoooouuuu!”  
  
The big one herded the little one towards the doors, which chimed as they exited. And the omnic pulled his hand away from where it been resting over the alarm button.  
  
Junkrat paused outside once they were a distance away, rifling through the shopping bags. “Goddamn omnics. Was lucky I’m not an easily offended sort…Eh. You sure this’ll be enough?”  
  
“Hmm,” Roadhog grunted.  
  
“Arright. Let’s look at this Mei-Get-Well Pack. We got cookies, chocolates, lychee drink, melon drink, panty blood pads-”  
  
“Grhhm...”  
  
“Don’t call ‘em that? Uh, I mean, lady time pads, a hottie bottle, pain pills, a bubble bath thingy, and a stinky candle what smells like ‘Angel Whispers on a Moonlit Forest Path’. We checked off everything a gal could want, eh? So this is sure to make her feel better.” He set off again, peg leg clacking with his limping gait as his bodyguard trailed dutifully behind him in the same stoic silence as always. He didn’t mind. That just left more room for him to talk. “She ain’t been right, Roadie. Haven’t seen her much out of her room at all. And when I did, she looked all weepy eyed and didn’t wanna talk. Haven’t rooted in over a week and when I asked her over, she said she’s not feeling well.”  
  
“Mm.”  
  
“I can put the clues together, see; wants to be alone, not feeling well, sniffly and all cry-eyed, a little snittier than usual, doesn’t want to bang… S’clearly a lady menses thing, and Hana said there’s nothing better for lady menses than a doting boyfriend and a lady kit! She gave me this list, says it never fails. Can’t shy away from this sort of thing, Roadie. Look, I know you can get a bit squeamish, but it’s one of those natural body processes. Like burping or farting, which I can tell you, mate, you do a LOT of both. Bloody oath! Especially the last one. Blimey, what did you eat last night anyway?”  
  
“…Hhhrmmm…”  
  
“Anyhow. If my Mei isn’t feeling herself, this is sure to help out. See, Roadie? This is all just part of going legit. We’re good, decent blokes doing good, decent sorts of things. That’s got to be worth at least fifteen points, right there. Twenty, if we get her a strawberry tea! Gotta remember to stop at that boba shop on the way. With all this, it’s back to arguing and kissing all like normal. Yeh! She’ll be apples in no time at all!”  
  
***

* * *

  
  
Roadhog, understandably, did not want to be present while Junkrat tried to reunite with his moping lover. He paused only to throw Junkrat off to the side where he was struggling with wrapping the goodie basket, leaned down and poised two huge fingers, and proceeded to tie an absolutely immaculate red bow with the ribbon around the handle before lumbering off back towards his room.  
  
With his precious bundle slung over his robotic arm and holding Mei’s favorite strawberry tea in the other, he clattered his way down the dorm halls, to where he knew Mei has been sequestered for the last week. He paused only when he spotted Lucio and Hana lingering outside the common room, and lifted the basket with a wide grin. Hana gave him a thumbs up, then giggled and started whispering to Lucio when he gave them both a questioning look. Junkrat continued on his way, finally limping to a stop and rapping noisily on her door.  
  
The com by the door buzzed to life a moment later, and Mei’s voice sounded just as small and tired as all the other times he’s tried. “…Hello?”  
  
“S’me again, lovey cakes,” he leaned down to coo dramatically into the receiver. “Your knight in shining…uh…shorts..?”  
  
“Oh…I’m sorry, Jamison, I still don’t feel very well enough to have visitors.”  
  
He detected a sniffle in her voice, ears honing in on it as he rapped on the door again. “C’mon, Mei. I’m worried for ya. I don’t care how sick you are, at least let me come in and drop this off for you to make you feel better. I got you a little something to help out!”  
  
“You didn’t have to…”  
  
“At least let me see you’re all right. Aw, babe, you can’t let a poor innocent rat waste away out here just left wondering about his favorite girl. Have a heart! Promise I’ll be quick. What do ya say?”  
  
There was silence from within and he started to wilt a bit, before there was the familiar whoosh of the door opening up. Mei stood there, looking a bit more…well, scuzzy, than he had expected. He’d rarely if ever seen her in this state, even while sick. She was dressed in baggy sweats, her hair hadn’t been brushed in a while, she smelled like body odor more than shampoo, and her face was puffy and red as if she’d been crying. He offered her a smile, and had opened his mouth to tell her that her lady troubles were over, when she abruptly staggered forward and threw her arms around him, jostling him and almost spilling the tea he was still holding. Burying her face into his chest, she immediately started sobbing before he could get a word in edge-wise.  
  
“Ah!” He froze like a startled animal, eyes widening down at her. Dropping the basket inside her door, he immediately wrapped an arm around her and shepherded her back into her room, shutting the door behind them. “Aw! Aw, darl, what’s it? What’s with all the…er…” He trailed off as he looked past her, noticing the reek of aromatic smoke coming from the sticks of incense stuck in the little ceramic bowl set up on her dresser, gray vapor drifting from the cherry-red embers on each end. The smoke drifted up near a crowded set of holopics that he’d never seen before, giving off a faint glowing light where they projected pictures of an older man and woman he did not recognize. “What’s this?”  
  
She drew back from, wiping at her tear-stained cheeks with the backs of her fists and sniffling noisily. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, I didn’t want to worry anyone.”  
  
“Hey! Hey, none of that apologizin’. Come on, have a sit down with me. I got you a-” He looked down and realized he must have been drinking the strawberry boba tea without remembering it, as half of it was gone. Squinting down at it and scratching his tufted hair, he held it out anyway. “Er. Sorry. I think I drank some?”  
  
She took the tea but didn’t drink, easing herself down to sit on the edge of the bed with him. She looked tired and miserable, saying nothing as she stared blankly at the floor for several long moments. Recognizing the emptiness in her gaze, he nudged the tea in her hand gently before glancing around, picking up one of the pictures by the incense burner as it projected the image above his open palm. It was of a smiling Chinese man and woman, hugging and posing with a beaming, chubby little girl with glasses holding a blue ribbon. “Who’s this? Hey! That looks an awful lot like you, don’t it?”  
  
She nodded slowly, not looking at it. “That was me. And those were my parents…Today’s the anniversary of my mother’s death while I was in cryostasis...”  
  
It took a moment for her words to really reach his brain. He stared at her blankly again, then his eyes widened. Here he’d been so, so absolutely sure that it was some lady problem or other that could be fixed with cotton and chocolates…and she’d been in mourning, alone, for the past week. Sputtering a bit, he frowned and quickly put the picture back by the incense, as if he’d sullied it with his mere touch. “Oh! Oh…Sorry, darl.”  
  
Her face screwed up again, teeth clenching, and another fat tear rolled down her cheek.  
  
He had utterly no idea what to say for these sorts of things, and couldn’t think of anything else to do except tell her as much. He could only wrap an arm around her, pulling her in against his bony ribs and holding her there. “Sorry. I’m not any good at sayin’ sorries and I dunno what else I can say. What do I say?”  
  
She shook her head and gave an exhausted, shuddering sigh. “You don’t have to say anything, Jamie. I didn’t mean to worry you. I just start thinking about everything around this time of year…just…everything…”  
  
“D’you want me to get someone? Someone better?” he asked.  
  
One dark, red-rimmed eye peeked up at him. “Don’t say that. Nobody’s better.”  
  
He fidgeted, wrapping his other arm around her carefully and hauling her onto his lap. “I’m not real good at listenin’ as I am at talking. But I’ll listen for you, darl. If you wanna talk, this time. Or not. You don’t have to say anything. We can just sit here in all the smoke, I don’t mind smoke. We can…er…do anything you feel like, or not. Mean it.”  
  
She wiped at her face again, pointing at the collection of pictures. “It’s okay. I know if they could still talk, they would tell me I should be strong and try to be happy. But sometimes I just can’t anymore. And I just sit and think about it because I don’t know what else to do…”  
  
“S’all right. You do what you need, yeah?” he said, a little lamely. He tried to think of something better than that. “Your uh…your mum was really pretty. Looks at her, she’s got the same smile you do, in the cheeks. Both looked real proud of ya. Hell, who wouldn’t be proud of someone like you?”  
  
She gave him a watery smile that didn’t really reach her eyes, pointing towards another set of pictures with her family lined up in front of snow-capped mountains. “That’s when they took me to _Gèlādāndōng Fēng_ , in the southern mountains. _Bàba_ always liked to travel. I think I inherited that from him.” She pointed to another picture of an older Mei wearing black and holding up her diploma. “That’s from my graduation. We went out to a new restaurant that night to celebrate, and everyone who ate the chicken dishes got food poisoning, including my father, so I-” Her voice cracked and she cleared her throat. “So I stayed up all night with him, making him tea and watching movies until he felt better, and when we tried to go back to the restaurant to complain, it had already been shut down. He said he’d never complain about my being vegetarian ever again. But he did…and…I wish he was still here to make fun of me…”  
  
He simply nodded along with her, completely lost in the ways of anything regarding family matters, but earnestly trying. He pointed to another photo. It was an innocuous shot of them simply posing and flashing the V for victory signs. “What about that one?”  
  
“…That was the last picture I took with them before leaving for Antarctica.”  
  
_SHIT_ , that had been the wrong one to ask about. “Sorry! Sorry, darl, I-”  
  
Sure enough, she was crying again. His eyes darted helplessly, but he tightened his grip around her and just remained silent until that storm has passed as well. Reaching for a tissue, she crawled off his lap to sit next to him, blowing her nose rather inelegantly. After a moment, she pointed forlornly at a set of newspaper prints lined up beside each other. Junkrat couldn’t read the Chinese characters at all, lifting a brow and waiting until she explained. “Those are their obituaries…And mine.”  
  
He blinked at her. “What are those?”  
  
“An announcement for a death. I was…listed as a casualty. They wrote a story about what happened and put my picture in the papers. They held a funeral. I hear it was a very nice one. But my mother was never the same after that.”  
  
“They thought…”  
  
“Yes. They thought we all were. And we…were. Except for me. But I was still frozen. Then my father was in an accident on his way to see his brother, a few years after they thought I was gone. So I was gone, my father was gone, and then my mother just…gave up. She got sick and was supposed to get better, but then she just didn’t. And the entire time, I was just…sleeping my life away.” She stared ahead again with that hollow-eyed look from before. “I missed my parents’ funerals and they never got to know I was still alive. The only one alive. I was alive and not Opara, or MacReady, or Adams who never got to see his children again... There was just… _me_.”  
  
Junkrat looked down and realized he had taken Mei’s tea and had been drinking it again. Neither of them had noticed. He quickly set it down again. “Well…I’m glad you’re here? You know I’m mad for you, love. So I’m, er, glad you didn’t die? Damn. I meant…Er. Wish I was better at this…”  
  
“No, no, you’re fine. I’m glad you came. I’m the one who should be sorry. Going on about my mother and father. I know you didn’t…really have them…” She bit her lip, her sadness now compounded by guilt. Which was the exact opposite of what Junkrat had wanted.  
  
He blurted out, “I got a story!”  
  
“I like your stories.”  
  
“Well, you’re right about that much. Not sure I had a dad, actually. I mean, I must’ve, but, whatever, yeah? Now my mum…I remember little bits and pieces of her. At least, I think they’re her. Me being little and us hiding from the red storms, her chasing off some blokes who wanted to hurt me for something I musta done, giving me food. But then she was gone, and forgot a lot of it, I think. Then I was going through some piles of junk I’d been hoarding, you know, as I do…and I found something.”  
  
She looked up at him with genuine interest. “What?”  
  
“Was a picture of her, Mei. It was old and ripped, but I knew it was her. Blond hair like mine, green eyes, nicest smile you ever seen on a lady…I mean, besides yours, of course. There she was, a real life picture of my mum, smiling up at me like she could almost see me.” He propped his pointed chin up with one hand, staring at the smoke of the incense thoughtfully. “Real kind look in her eyes and everything. So I folded up that paper and I took it everywhere with me.” He patted the satchel on his belt. “Sometimes if I was in a real bad way, I’d take her out and she’d smile up at me from the paper. And I’d say things like ‘Oi, mum, how’s it going?’ or ‘Got bit on the arse today, mum, didn’t see the bug but it’s a real bad one! Gonna be oozin’ for days, mum!’”  
  
“Jamison!”  
  
“And ya know, she couldn’t say anything because she was paper, but it’d make me feel a little better sometimes. Kept her photo for years, I did. Through thick and thin, everything I lost over the years, I never lost that fuckin’ piece of paper. Not even when it was all torn on the edges, I was real careful with her. Cause I loved my mum, I must have.”  
  
Her brows furrowed when Junkrat abruptly started laughing. But it was strange and thin, a little too high. Not his real laugh. She only listened when he continued.  
  
“Joined up with Hog. You know Hog, he’s a real classy gent. Big reader. Always traded for new readin’ things, always cycling through old books and mags…” He laughed again, twitching oddly. “And then one day, he was readin’ through some old magazine or other. Think it was car parts or something…and I happened to look over his big fat shoulder at the right time. And there, in the magazine, was the exact same picture of my mum. The exact same picture, only it was the whole thing this time. There was my mum, all blond and green-eyed and smilin’…because it was an advertisement for pizza, Mei. She’d never been smiling at me. She was smiling at these two shithead kids in the same advertisement, giving them pizza. The whole time, all those years, I’d been carrying around a cut-out of some lady selling pizza, thinking that was my mum.”  
  
She stared at him with a horrified look on her weepy face.  
  
“Didn’t know what to do with her after that. Guess I shoulda torn her up, cause I was so mad. But she was still…She was still smilin’, Mei. Even though I knew it was just her givin’ pizza to other kids who weren’t me. Probably weren’t her kids either, Hog says you can’t trust advertisements tryin’ to sell you shit.  But she was still smilin’ and I couldn’t tear her up. Couldn’t throw her in the fire, either. So when we packed camp and left I still didn’t know what to do with her so I just…I dunno. I put a rock on top of her picture and I left it there. Fuck knows where that was, of course. Wonder if she’s still there. Eh, probably not.”  
  
“…Jamie…”  
  
He looked up at her with an expression she’d never seen on him before. There was no trace of his customary grin, just an absolutely sad and baffled sort of confusion on suddenly very young features. “…D’you think she might still be there, though?”  
  
She launched onto him. He flailed a bit, his pegleg kicking what remained of the tea on the ground, the cup clattering onto its side and oozing pink liquid and tapioca pearls all over her floor. She didn’t notice, hugging onto him until he hugged her back again. And she cried her eyes out for both of them, since he couldn’t. It was an ugly cry, that deep and bone-shaking sort of cry that made her sobs into overdramatic, almost animal-like sounds. A sort of deep, chesty _HUUU-HUUU-HUUUUUUUU_ noise in a baritone that would have shamed Roadhog himself. And she was fairly sure she was getting entirely too much tears and snot on the junker’s chest, but he didn’t really seem to care, patting her head and getting his mechanical fingers stuck in the knots of her unkempt hair.  
  
When she finally drew back, his usual smile was back, though still full of concern. He wiped at her face, bony knuckles swiping her cheek. “Ah, s’all right, darl. You and me, eh?” His eyes glanced downward and he pulled away suddenly. “Ah, shit! I spilled your tea! Uh, towel! Towel!”  
  
It was nice to have something else to focus on, scrambling up as she ran for her bathroom to get a towel. Tossing it to him quickly as he leaned down to start mopping up the pink mess, her eyes were drawn off to the side, at the basket sitting just inside the door. Pulling on her glasses, she moved towards it, fingers brushing the elaborate red bow on the handle, and starting to remove the decorate paper crumpled on top.  
  
“Jamie, what’s this? Was this for me?”  
  
“AUuuuh! Wait, don’t open that!” He dove for it and missed, as she swept it up out of reach. “It’s uh…it’s a bomb! It’ll blow if you open it!”  
  
Ignoring his warning, she pulled the paper away. There, nestled in more decorative tissue paper, was the array he’d bought at the store that day; cookies, chocolates, drinks, candles, pads and tampons, pills, and an empty grenade with his drawn smileyface, grinning up at her. There it was. After all her mourning and focus on death…  
  
He’d bought her a PMS kit.  
  
She stared down at it for a long while, then back to where Junkrat was trying to slither out of sight under her bed. Her shoulders started shaking again, though this time it was a different sort of sound, and a different feeling that she hadn’t felt in weeks. She started laughing. Holding up the basket in one hand, she turned on him and shook it. “Jamison Fawkes! Really? REALLY?!”  
  
He had gotten stuck halfway under her bed, covering his face with both hands. “I thought you weren’t feelin’ well! Hana said those things always help! Hog picked out the candle! The bot at the store judged me! It’s not my fault!”  
  
“ _Wǒde tiān na_! I don’t even get those anymore!” She started rifling through the kit, eyes still bleary, but brighter. “How much did you buy? Oh my gosh, this really would have kept me stocked for weeks. Oh! Jamie, you remembered my favorite cookies!”  
  
“It was supposed t’make you feel better,” he moaned.  
  
“Well…it does. I mean, not for the reasons you thought, but…Oh, get up off the floor, silly. I’ll give some of it to Hana and to Angela’s clinic, for emergencies. But the rest of it is definitely for me.” She leaned down, grasping his arms and hauling backward to help drag him up off the floor. “And you can have some too, but you are not eating all of it this time, do you hear me? You don’t…have to go anywhere, do you?”  
  
“Well, a bloke like me has got a busy schedule. But for you, darl? I’ll try and clear out my appointments.”  
  
“Thank you, Jamie.”  
  
Very carefully, she opened her drawer and began turning off the holopics. One after the other, the smiling faces of her parents and her younger self disseminated into particles of light and vanished. Filing them away into their usual spot, she kept them with the rest of her saddest memories, for the next time she needed them. The incense had burned down to stubs of wood and piles of ash, and she brushed them away into her trash can. She had gotten a little tired of the smell of incense over the past few days.  
  
She was curious to find out what ‘Angel Whispers on a Moonlit Forest Path’ smelled like, anyway, and why Roadhog had chosen that one for her.  
  
Jamison was already impatiently twirling a lighter between his fingertips, his eyes constantly glancing aside to the package of cookies nearby. “Come on, come on, come on!”  
  
“Stop being impatient,” she scolded him, setting up the candle before gesturing him forward. “All right, light the wick. I guess this might be okay for the smell…Oh my goodness, I really need to take a shower.”  
  
“Yeah ya do.”  
  
“You’re not supposed to agree! Besides, you’re always the stinky one!” She smacked his arm lightly with the back of her hand as he lit the candle. “Maybe I’ll try out the bath bomb you gave me? It’s…it’s not really one of your bombs, is it? Like, it’s not a real bath bomb. I do not want a repeat of last time.”  
  
“Only one way to find out,” he said, waggling his brows. “Might even get in there with you. Spent a lot of money on this lady kit, after all!” He paused for a moment, glancing over to her and cautiously repeating his words from earlier. “…Was supposed to make you feel better?”  
  
She nodded up at him, leaning up to press a kiss to his chin. “It does. You do.”  
  
He grinned down at her. And wiping away the last of her tears from earlier, she smiled back.


	7. Operation: Miracle Prawn

“Mei? Did you hear me?”  
  
There wasn’t much to stare at, so Mei stared at the one thing that was there; a single clock on the wall, watching with a blank gaze at the black numbers on the stark white circle. The thin red line of the second-counter slowly ticked away, moving steadily with its little mechanized jerky movement, clicking one spot over in timely precision. It was odd, still having an analog clock in this day and age. Perhaps Dr. Ziegler was comforted by its irritating ticking, somehow? That ceaseless, echoing ticking, where she could hear the turning and clacking of every gear in the machine’s guts, somewhere behind that clean white and black face. She stared at the clock and she listened to it tick, and watched the red hand go the entire way around, from 12 to 12 again.  
  
Dr. Ziegler tried again after a minute had gone by, biting her lip a little as the smaller woman stared blankly at the clock on the wall above, seemingly uncomprehending. “Mei? Mei-Ling, I know this is a lot to take in…”  
  
Mei shuddered a little on the examination table. She was used to the cold, more than anyone, but the thin little paper medical gowns offered no protection from the deathly chill of the clinic. She wished she had her thermal gear and her furs, like when she was trapped in the wastelands of Antarctica. True, she had lost almost ten years of her life, been the sole survivor of her entire expedition, and had traipsed across miles of unforgiving ice with no food and few supplies; but as she shivered beneath her little paper dress, she wondered if Antarctica had actually been warmer.  
  
Dr. Ziegler was talking again, over the ticking of the clock. “Ah, I see. If you need another minute, I can step out-”  
  
Mei felt herself lifting a hand to try and signal her to stay, trying to fight her way back to the present. The open folder with the little scattering of papers was still open on her lap, though all the letters jumbled together. Licking her lips, she tried to speak, a little wheezing noise hissing out before she managed to wrangle any words. “No! No, I’m…I’m sorry. Sorry, Dr. Ziegler. I d-don’t know what came over me. It…I just..”  
  
A gentle, calming hand (though covered in rubber and colder than ice) was laid upon her shoulder. “Just take a moment, breathe.”  
  
She tried to breathe, and the cold air burned her lungs. “Nn..”  
  
“It’s all right. I must admit I was….surprised, myself. And I assure you, I double checked, and then triple checked. That’s why I called you in for the tests today, just to be completely sure. I didn’t want to say anything until I was certain but…Well, now I am certain. Your results just came back and…They are positive, Mei.”  
  
She shook her head, because the results couldn’t be positive. The doctor had just made a mistake, that was all. “B-but…but I’m not…”  
  
“They all came back positive. You’re about four weeks pregnant.”  
  
“…No, I’m not…”  
  
“Well you were about three weeks when you first came in for your regular check-up, but the hormone levels threw me off and I wanted to run some more tests. I even thought the machine might have been broken. But no, all results positive.” Dr. Ziegler kept talking, even if she shouldn’t have been. Because she was wrong. “I know that…it’s a lot to take in. When you’re ready, we’ll start to go over the procedures and new medical schedule you’ll be on. I do apologize for the frequency, but I’ll need to keep a very close eye on things. The odds are-”  
  
“I’m not pregnant,” Mei said again, looking up a little more desperately. “I can’t be. You said so, yourself. You said so.”  
  
“I…believe the odds I gave you were a little less than one percent…And it seems that one of your tries has hit the mark in that less than one percent range.”  
  
“Tries? But we weren’t…No, we weren’t trying?” Mei held her forehead, still trying to process everything. They hadn’t been trying for a baby at all. After all, they were both quite nearly sterile. Dr. Ziegler’s own tests had confirmed it. Mei’s emergency cryostasis had killed her eggs, and Jamison’s sperm was non-viable from his lifelong endurance of radiation. Of course, that hadn’t discouraged his libido. Especially after it was confirmed that they needn’t bother with contraceptives, she had lost count of the times she’d been intimate with the insatiable junker…and she did mean insatiable. He was always ravenous for more, and often came to her multiple times a day. Most often, she had obliged him. She’d ‘obliged’ him many, many times.  
  
Could it be? After so many months and countless ‘tries’ together, had there been some stray wandering sperm that had actually managed to find a lonely stray egg? Was it possible?  
  
Angela nodded gently, her fingers tightening very softly on Mei’s shoulder to try and focus her attention. “Just take whatever time you need. May I assume that you will want to tell the father in person, or do you want me to call him in?”  
  
“N-no. I’m sorry. I’ll tell him. I think I just need to calm down a little. Can I put my things back on and go clear my head?”  
  
“Of course. I’ll call you in a few hours, all right? Let me know if you need help with telling him, or anything else.”  
  
“Mm.”  
  
Angela left the room, and Mei began pulling on her clothes again. Her head was still spinning and as she pulled on her sweater, she looked down at her stomach slowly and then reached for her coat as well, shrugging it on and zipping it up as she rested both hands on her belly. It was always too cold in this clinic. Couldn’t let the baby get cold.  
  
…The baby…  
  
She had always thought she would make a good mother. Even before she had left for her ill-fated expedition, she had made plans that included little sons or daughters one day. She’d wanted to meet someone nice and settle down with him, and have two or three children in quick succession. They would have grown up together, with lots of toys about science to peak their curiosities, sports to keep them all healthy, and candy as a ‘sometimes’ treat. And she and her husband would attend every play and pageant, every practice, every recital, and they’d love and support one another as they grew up together. She’d wanted a family.  
  
Of course, that hadn’t happened. She had been locked out from nine years of her own life, had nearly died while trying to save herself, and her insides had been left ravaged and her hopes of a family dashed to pieces. And then she had not fallen for a responsible family-oriented fellow scientist as planned, but had instead (against all odds and against all better judgments) fallen in with an explosives-obsessed radiation-addled Australian junker whose only family was a pig-masked bodyguard and mercenary killer. They were the two that she had made into a sort of misfit kind of family for her. The kind of family with less piano recitals and soccer matches, and more random explosions and hunting down enemy Talon agents. They were going to make a new, strange, good life together, her and a man who called himself Junkrat. And now that was (again, against all odds) the man who had fathered an impossible baby inside her.  
  
How the hell was she supposed to tell him?…

 

* * *

  
  
  
“Oi Roadie, can you loan me your communicator?”  
  
“Why?”  
  
The two junkers were lingering in the cafeteria again. Junkrat had, as usual, inhaled his meal within a minute, and impatiently waited for his bodyguard to finish the massive amount of plates still in front of him. Roadhog seemed more interested in his honey garlic shrimp than his employer, even when the latter made a face and stuck his tongue out at the little orange-pink creatures scattered across the bed of rice.  
  
“Ugh! Never liked prawns, or shrimp. Creepy little squiggly things with weird sharp faces, that’s what they are.”  
  
“…Kind of like you.”  
  
“Fuck you, Roadie. C’mon, c’mon, c’mon, give me your comm. I need it to call Mei!” He reached across with one long arm, trying to snag the communicator by the pig-masked man’s ear. “Just hand it here, would ya?”  
  
Roadhog leaned back out of range. “Use your own.”  
  
“I tried! S’weird, I think it’s not working right. She called me three times, didn’t leave a message. Then she called again, and I was there to pick up, but then she just kinda breathed into the phone, made a weird noise, and it hung up. So I tried calling her back a few times and she didn’t pick up. Think maybe the comm’s busted. Let me use yours!”  
  
“If your’s isn’t blinking red, it’s not busted.”  
  
“Then what’s the deal with Mei, d’you think? Never took her for the ‘heavy breathing over the phone’ sort of gal. That’s really more your kind of a gig.”  
  
Roadhog shrugged with a forkful of shrimp halfway to his jaws. “Hm. Doesn’t seem right.”  
  
“Yeh! I know she’s there, but she’s acting all squirrely. And usually you know how she is on the phone. Always picks it up within three rings, sits up straight, speaks real prim and polite and proper, it’s adorable.” He straightened up, pinky stuck out by his communicator by his ear, raising his voice in a poor falsetto of Mei’s accent. “Mei-Ling Zhou speaking!”  
  
“Should just go find her, then.” Roadhog said.  
  
“You just saying that because she’s not acting right, or because you just want to eat your gross-arse shrimps alone?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
Grumbling, Junkrat lifted from his seat and purposefully left behind his own mess of plates for Roadhog to clean up, ignoring his bodyguard’s warning rumbles as he hobbled off. Shrimp or prawns or xiā or whatever anyone called those little things, he was simply not a fan. He exited the cafeteria before any hooks could be flung his way, his peg clacking noisily down the hall as he skulked off towards the direction of the dorms. Pounding on the door of Mei’s room, he received no answer. He tried the communicator yet again, and still no answer. Was she in a meeting, maybe? Maybe at another of her appointments at Mercy’s clinic? She wasn’t due out for any missions, he knew, so she had to be somewhere.  
  
The meeting room was empty. And the library. And the entertainment room was not empty, but had that creepy African omnic horse-lady-thing hanging about inside instead of Mei, and he was none too keen on sticking around anything omnic, especially horse-lady-things. Everywhere he tried was empty, and when he knocked on the door of Mercy’s clinic, she gave him a very strange look when he asked if she’d seen Mei. She’d said that she hadn’t seen her since that morning, but urged him to try and contact her quickly, and then quickly excused herself.  
  
He was traveling from clinic towards the practice grounds, when he spotted movement up on top of one of the towers over by the cliffs, by one of the old satellite comm discs. Squinting, he was fairly sure he saw a dark head of hair, and a little flash of color that might have been a red-beaded pin with a rhinestone snowflake. Brightening, he quickened his limping gait across the pavement, metal peg clacking noisily as he stood at bottom of the stairs.  
  
“Mei! Is that you, babe?” he called.  
  
“Jamie?” she called back, sounding a bit surprised. “What are you doing out here?”  
  
“Looking for you, obviously!” He started up after her, poking his head out to see her sitting by herself on a beach blanket out in the sun. “Hey! You sunbathing? Make room for a rat! I’m real good at sunbathing, got lots of tips for ya. Now you’re gonna want a nice, even, all-over tan. So, topless sunbathing’s the way to go-”  
  
“Jamie.”  
  
“Take it from me, sun-baked tits are some of the nicest-”  
  
“Jamie!”  
  
“Got a nice sun-baked pair on me, meself! One time I was in Sydney-”  
  
“JAMIE!”  
  
He blinked and looked at her. She didn’t really seem to be in the proper, relaxed state of mind required for topless sunbathing, not at all. She looked fretful and a little drained. Screwing his face up to one side, he squinted and sat down on the blanket a little more quietly. “Not really sunbathing at all, were you?”  
  
“Sorry. I was going to call you later. Again.”  
  
“Was your comm busted? Thought mine was, but Roadie wouldn’t loan me his, so I went looking for you. Looked everywhere, actually. What’re you doing all the way out here by yourself? You in some kind of thinking funk again? I know how you get stuck in the muck sometimes, eh? Well, your favorite rat’s here for you now, darl!”  
  
She managed a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Well, I guess since you’re here now, there’s no getting around it. I think…we need to talk about something, Jamison.”  
  
“Sure! What are we talkin’ about, again?”  
  
“Okay…I’ve been going through this in my head over and over again, trying to think how to tell you. And I still don’t think I’ve decided on anything so, I just don’t know what to do. So…I’m just going to tell you, okay? So please just…Okay, I’m going to tell you…” She took a deep breath…and then continued blabbering on despite her best efforts. “Just give me a second, okay? I was going to call you but then I couldn’t, and then I thought maybe we should meet at the clinic, but it’s so cold in there, and it’s a lot to-”  
  
One long, lanky arm snaked around her abruptly, scooting her across the blanket and up against his side. “Think I might have been a bad influence on you. I’m normally the one with the mouth going off before the rest of me. Take a breath, c’mon, just say it, spit it out.”  
  
“Okay, I went to see Dr. Ziegler today. I-it’s been confirmed and…uh, four weeks…I-I’m…”  
  
“C’mon.”  
  
“Jamie, she says I’m pregnant.”  
  
He froze beside her, every usually twitching muscle going stone still. Very, very slowly, he turned to look at her, his face shadowed from the sun and his yellow eyes practically glowing. She couldn’t place the tone of his voice at all. “…What?”  
  
She took a breath. “I’m pregnant.”  
  
“…No you’re not.” He looked down at her stomach like it was about to bite him, lifting a hand, his voice uncharacteristically quiet. “…You having a go at me, Mei?”  
  
She was almost relieved at his trepidation. It had been much the same as her own strange wariness, and she had been afraid that he would be as enthusiastic about it as he was about other things, with hooting and hollering and far too much celebration for something she hadn’t even fully accepted yet. Instead he sat there with doubt and surprise, repeating the same words she had said earlier. ‘No you’re not’. No, you can’t be pregnant. She couldn’t be pregnant. THEY couldn’t be pregnant. Not them.  
  
“S-she said that the odds were less than 1 percent…but we somehow hit that one percent together. It’s about four weeks.”  
  
“But my balls are no good. And you got bad eggs. I mean, we can’t…”  
  
“We could. Just, less than one percent. And…we did. I’m about four weeks in. I mean, it’s not quite a baby-”  
  
His eyes darted down at the word ‘baby’ again, looking down at her belly. It wasn’t swollen at all, and he had trouble imagining something like a human baby in there. He’d seen pictures of babies before they were babies. Ugly little things, they were, like a prawn, or a shrimp. Like the honey garlic shrimp that Roadhog had been eating for lunch earlier, one of those shrimp, floating around somewhere in what should have been a barren womb.  
  
He listed his mechanical fingers to his head, pulling at his hair. “No. Fuck…Fuck, can’t be. Tell her to test again-”  
  
“She checked and re-checked again. She didn’t believe it at first, either.”  
  
“Well she’s wrong. Fuck me, she’s the one who said we were both bodgy on the inside! She’s the one who said-”  
  
“Less than one percent chance, Jamison…”  
  
“Uh…Are we sure…it’s mine?…”  
  
She didn’t bother with an answer to that one.  
  
He put his face in his hands, mumbling expletives and something about shrimp to himself. Mei waited patiently beside him, wrapping her arms around her knees and rocking back and forth slowly as she waited for the junker to gather himself. And finally he did, peeking one eye out between his fingers. “What do we do, Mei?”  
  
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I only found out this morning.”  
  
“Is it…I mean, do we know it’s good?” His voice sounded surprisingly small.  
  
“What do you mean, good?”  
  
“I mean…four limbs, two eyes, two ears, a nose, does it have everything? Is it okay in the brain? It’s not like me? I mean, if it’s from me-”  
  
She seemed surprised, then a little stern, pulling herself in against his bony ribs and staying there. “No, Jamie, I don’t want you to think like that. It’s not like that.”  
  
“It might be like that,” he said. “Mei, you’ve never seen junker babies. They’re not good. The radiation’s no good for babies. Even if you can have them, and there’s not many, they’re not…they’re not always right. It does stuff to ‘em.”  
  
He gave her a rather haunted look. There had been very few pregnancies in Junkertown, and news always spread like wildfire when a woman’s belly started to grow. But, news would also spread like wildfire when it was ‘just like the others’. A lot of times they’d just be tiny premature stillborns, dead before they could live. Other times they would come out withered and malformed from the poisons in their air and water. And few junker women had the resources or the werewithal to try and raise an unhealthy baby. He’d seen one of them dead once, abandoned out in the lonely desert; a dried husk of what should have been a baby, with its fingers fused together, extra limbs twisted around where its legs should have been, and its sunken eyes the size of grapefruits, too big for its skull.  
  
He usually put such things out of his mind. Not like he was ever going to have a baby, after all…  
  
“I think it’s too early to tell?” she said. “It’s not really anything yet, at four weeks.”  
  
“A lil’ shrimp…” he muttered, looking to her belly again.  
  
“Not even a shrimp,” she confirmed, even if she thought the comparison a little odd. “I guess we just…I’m not sure what we want to do? This changes a lot of things.”  
  
“If it’s not a good one, you gotta tell the doc to do something. S’not right, makin’ a baby live like that…” His gaze had gone far-off again, and she could tell that whatever he was thinking of, it was bothering him. “Heh. Figures…Everything I make, it breaks apart eventually, eh?”  
  
“Jamison, it might be fine. I’m not sure what you’re thinking, but it’s not like that. It might be good. This isn’t Junkertown,” she said gently. “Dr. Ziegler and I have already talked about all the medical schedules we’ll need, to make sure everything is good and that she’s healthy.”  
  
His head darted up abruptly at that. “She?”  
  
“No! No, no,” she said quickly, waving both hands. “I mean, um..Oh, that just came out. It’s too early to be anything yet. I just kind of said it. I mean…It would be okay, wouldn’t it? If it was a she?”  
  
His eyes widened down at her. “A little girl? Okay? What kind of a question is that? Of course it would be okay. But…it can’t be like me. It’s gotta be like you. A little baby version of my Mei running around, that’s more than okay. She needs to look just like you though. Gotta be real smart like you, too. Hell, there should be as many little Meis as possible, a whole army of them!”  
  
“An army? Oh, um…Let’s slow down a bit, there. That might be too many. Besides…She might look like you,” Mei pointed out, the edges of her lips turning up in a little smile. “I’ve always liked your eyes, she might have your eyes?”  
  
He paused at that. Slowly, the twisted husk in his mind’s eye shifted and changed, first to the honey garlic shrimp from Roadhog’s plate, and then it grew; with all four limbs, two ears, a nose, and two eyes…his eyes. A pair of orange-yellow eyes, on a pair of fat little cheeks that looked more like Mei’s than his. Maybe a little girl with his eyes would be okay, although she still looked more like her mother. Maybe she’d have his hair too? Or his freckles? Or what if it was a boy? A little boy that looked like him or Mei would be fine too. He grew up scrawny and scrangly, so that was what he imagined. A little boy with band-aids on his knees and tape around his glasses…glasses over dark eyes like Mei’s.  
  
But they had to be healthy, they had to be whole. They couldn’t be like the broken things he was used to. They had to be…good…Like their mom. And maybe, just maybe, a little like him? Mei said she’d wanted the baby to have his eyes, after all. Maybe they could be like him, and still be good. Maybe it would all be all right, if they were careful.  
  
“D’ya think…I mean, can we be sure they’d be all right?” He asked cautiously, trying not to let the little pictures in his mind turn back into the radiation-poisoned husks he’d seen before. “Heh. I said they. Like, more’n one.”  
  
“We have one of the best doctors in the world here. I think that would be okay?” She said a little more quickly than she’d meant, and shied away a little when he looked at her. “I mean…A boy or a girl would be fine. Or both. Or having more than one. I always used to imagine I’d have both, so I’m good with either. Or both. Especially both? I haven’t really thought about it in such a long time, having kids. I thought I just couldn’t, and that was that…”  
  
“Thought I couldn’t too. I mean, not just my bodgy balls, but finding someone who’d put up with me, eh? Plus, never thought I’d be a good dad. I didn’t have a dad and then there’s the way I am, and just I mean…me? I couldn’t…can’t…be a dad?”  
  
She rested her cheek against his sunburnt shoulder, the tips of her hair tickling his arm. “Well, I guess we were both wrong?”  
  
He was still having trouble grasping the concept of the whole ‘baby’ thing, much less his ‘baby’ thing. Of course, that meant he would be a father. And that whole idea still seemed pretty damn preposterous, him being a dad. He was pretty sure he was in his mid-twenties somewhere, so that part wasn’t the issue. But the radiation had eaten away bits of his mind and his memory, he had a love of pyrotechnics that nobody else understood, and only a few short years ago he had torn a path of destruction and chaos across multiple countries in a crime spree that had landed him on the telly the world over. What sort of dad was that to a baby? Couldn’t bring a baby on a heist, could you? Babies meant lots of screaming, crying, pooping, laughing, changing nappies…  
  
Although, he was honestly used to pretty much all of that, really…except maybe the nappy-changing. And he would have to change a lot of things, not just nappies. Everything would change, especially how things were with him and Mei.  
  
“It’s kind of overwhelming, isn’t it?” Mei murmured next to him. “I thought maybe Dr. Ziegler had just found an abnormality a few hours ago…and it turned out to be a baby?”  
  
“That’s a pretty big kind of an abnormality, lovey. We…We can keep it, though? Yeh?”  
  
“Well…I want to. And I think you want to? Don’t you?”  
  
“Yeh, I want to. If it’s a good one, and it’s gonna be a good one. But, what do we do with them? I dunno how to be a dad to anyone.”  
  
“Well, I’ve never been a mother before…but I always wanted to be,” she said, and there was a little glow her cheeks, and her smile seemed more steady. “It’s not like we’re teenagers or anything. I mean you’re in your twenties and I’m…I’m still technically, sort of barely thirty-one? In a way, right? That’s okay, I think. And we’ll have lots of help here, with doctors and friends, and we can always ask questions to Ana or Torbjorn or-”  
  
“Wait! You’re right, we can. Doesn’t that little man have like eighty-seven children? He’s got to know everything there is to know about raisin’ babies! And yeah, Nan will know everything too. She’s aces, bet she knows twenty different ways to change a nappy on the battlefield…Although I guess you won’t be out on the battlefield for a while.” Very hesitantly, he reached out a large, broad black-nailed hand, looking to Mei as if for permission. After he received a little encouraging nod, he went to place it on her stomach. Strange, it didn’t feel very different to him at all. “Gotta keep our little prawn safe in there.”  
  
“I thought you didn’t like prawns? They scare you?” She teased.  
  
“They do. And I gotta say, I am fuckin’ terrified of this one in particular,” he said, rubbing his palm over her belly. “Oi, that’s what I’m gonna call this whole thing! Operation: Miracle Prawn.”  
  
“Please don’t.”  
  
“Too late, it’s official. Besides…We got to go talk to Doc Angelface and make sure everything’s apples with you on the insides. D’you even realize how strong n’ smart this one’s gonna be, darl? Just think how fuckin’ determined this baby is to get born, beating those less than one percent odds? That right there, that’s from me, that’s junker determination. Or I guess that might be from you too, that will to survive against anything what comes at us? And with our combined smarts? Fucking hell, Mei, this baby’s going to rule the world.”  
  
“I guess I never thought about it that way. Maybe she…or he…maybe they really do want to be born that badly. I’m still not calling it ‘Operation: Miracle Prawn’, though.”  
  
“You’ll come around.”  
  
His lips pressed to the top of her head, and his prior fear and wariness seemed to have mostly abated, though his hand on her belly was shaking a bit. “Arright. Like I said, we gotta go check in with Doc Angelface, and then Hog, and then Hana and Lucio, and then everybody else on the whole base.  And then probably the world. And then I guess I got to read up on baby things because if I think about it any I think I’m just about ready to chunder everywhere, so I’m not gonna think about it right now. In fact, right now…I’m thinking of something else?” His hand on her belly rubbed in wider circles, until it started to slip downward, his lithe fingers sliding into the top of her pants.  
  
She hadn’t quite been expecting that, eyes widening. “Jamison!”  
  
He hauled himself on top of her, tilting his lower body to keep his weight off her stomach. “At some point I’m gonna have to stop rootin’ you. Because of the baby and all, gotta take good care of the baby. So we gotta get lots of prime ‘us’ time in while we can. And before we go to the doc’s, there’s nothing I want more than to root you silly. Again. Let’s put another baby in there, make it twins.”  
  
“That’s not how it works!” she protested, even as her arms looped around his bony shoulders.  
  
“I’ll show you how it works,” he replied, already starting to peel the bottom of her shirt upward, pausing to rest a broad palm across her stomach. “Can’t believe it. Still can’t believe it. Probably won’t really believe it until you’re getting all big, heh. Less than one percent, eh? Heh, not for my girl and the little junker inside her! And all the ones after that! Operation: Miracle Prawn is officially a go!”

He grinned when he saw she was about to give him another earbashing about the name, and smothered her words with his lips instead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (This is not actually my personal headcanon. I like to think that Junkrat and Mei actually come to terms with their inability to conceive, eventually. But, fanfiction is for imagining crazy scenarios and I had a few requests for this specific subject! So, here you go!)


	8. Glow in the Dark

The attack had blindsided their defense from the left, where Mei and Junkrat had been positioned. One moment everything had been normal, and then the next, everything had turned to fire and pain and hot metal. Junkrat had gone down first, and Mei had thrown up one of her walls to protect them. But not even her ice could stand the barrage, and the last thing he could remember was her trying to say something that he couldn’t hear over the ringing of his tinnitus and the blood clogging his ears, and the heavy weight of her body covering his. And after that, he couldn’t remember anything at all.  
  
He awoke over a week later in the intensive care unit, and his first instincts had been to laugh and make some joke or other. But trying to laugh made his ribs hurt, and his jokes didn’t seem to have any effect on Dr. Angelface. She just smiled at him in a very strange way, and her eyes had been wet as she tended to his broken body. But, she’d always been a tough sell, even on his best joke material. So he lay back, and he asked where Mei was.  
  
Infuriatingly, she had not answered him. Instead she puttered about with her doctor’s business, and ignored his question. So, never one to be ignored, he asked it again. And that time, she looked away. And something about that motion made his stomach seize and then drop. So he asked again. Where was Mei? And then again. Where was Mei?!  
  
And that was when Angelface had just shaken her pretty head. And while Junkrat stared at her blankly, she had to swallow hard several times, and her voice broke when she told him that Mei was gone.  
  
Everyone in earshot knew when the younger junker had been delivered the news. The noises that came out of that clinic had carried far and wide. Not that that was unusual, with how loud and vivacious Junkrat had always been. But the heads of everyone nearby turned all at once when they heard that one particular sound. Or really, it was a series of sounds. It wasn’t in a language any of them could understand, since language had nothing to do with it. But nor was it a sound that animals could make, since animals couldn’t really understand such things either. The closest words might be ‘keening’ or ‘wailing’, or strange guttural, throaty, sobbing noises that if recorded would probably sound downright humorous in any other instance.  
  
Outside, Roadhog looked up slowly, then looked down again. Hana pressed her lips together, then buried her face into Lucio’s neck as he put his arm around her. Winston put one large leathery palm over his face, and made his own little noises. After all, one did not have to be human to understand what those sounds meant. Perhaps ironically, it was Zenyatta and the other omnics who had the best term for it. It was nothing that could be spelled out in letters, but had been built up out of ones and zeroes. It was a binary code, breaking down one of the tangled concepts of humanity; something that meant a depth of grief that was, both at once, something to aspire to in its pure and raw emotion, and something to hope to never experience.  
  
And it was those terms that the omnic monk would later use to best explain the sounds that Junkrat made when he learned that Mei was dead.

 

* * *

 

  
  
He refused to attend the viewing or the funeral.  
  
Instead he sat in the cafeteria, eating ice cream with his bodyguard.  
  
Roadhog had tried to suggest that they go out with Ana and pick out something black, and do things the civilized way. Mei had always preferred the civilized way, after all. Junkrat had promptly turned and punched Hog square in the gut, thrown his ice cream at him, and told him to fuck off with that. Hog, barely affected by the little blow to his immense belly, wiped away the cone sliding down his arm, and shrugged slowly as he reverted back to his usual silence. He simply listened while Rat went off in another of his tirades.  
  
Black was fucking stupid to wear. It was too hot to wear black and only fucking idiots wore it to look tough or attend funerals, and he wasn’t doing either. Besides, Mei had told him that it was Chinese tradition to wear white during funerals, so how dumb was all of that? What was the point of a funerary viewing anyway? He’d seen plenty of dead blokes and dead broads in the Outback, both of them had. Was a waste of resources, really, plugging up bullet holes and reattaching pieces and dressing up a dead corpse. Fucking stupid, putting Mei’s body in a box so everyone could look at it. And they’d say things like how peaceful she looked, or how she looked like she was sleeping. Idiots! It hadn’t been a peaceful death at all. And Mei didn’t sleep on her back with her hands folded on her chest, she slept on her side with her legs curled up a little but not quite fetal, and she always hogged the damn covers. And fuck them, that’s how he wanted to remember her. Not some cold cadaver in a box.  
  
Junkrat slammed both hands onto the table before stomping off towards the food dispensers, made himself another soft serve ice cream cone out of the machine, hurled it at the next person to come in the room- A rather befuddled McCree- and then stormed out of the cafeteria. With a low groan along with the effort of trying to move his rotund body, Roadhog squeezed out of their booth and followed, leaving Jesse behind to clean up a mess of vanilla and chocolate swirl.  
  
The porcine bodyguard already knew where his manic employer was headed…off to loot Mei’s room. Again.  
  
Hog got there just in time to see Rat tear down the white mourning banner that someone had hung up over her doorway. Carelessly letting it flutter onto the floor, he stepped over the mound of incense, candles, holopics, and stuffed animals that had been piled up around her door, and barged back into Mei’s dorm. Overwatch had already hit the place hard while he’d been asleep. All of Mei’s computers, files, research, and papers were long gone. Not that he’d ever given a damn about all that nonsense anyway. Instead he went to scavenge the things that were actually important.  
  
He’d already taken the string lights from above her bed, along with her favorite snowflake print quilt. She’d had a collection of books under her bed that he’d stolen, too, even if he’d probably never ever read them. Her makeup had already been thrown away or doled out, but he’d managed to purloin some of his favorite flavors of her fruity chapsticks. And though Winston had confiscated all of Mei’s pictures, he’d given Rat all the pertinent ones; with them at the beach, or from his surprise party she’d thrown at his favorite barbecue joint, or his personal favorite, the blurry one that Hana had taken when Rat would lift Mei up and spin her in a circle, and she’d always complain but would always let him do it anyway.  
  
There wasn’t much left by now, but he dug through the remnants. Because if there was anyone who could scavenge through the dregs, it was him. He found a stuffed seal in her closet, a gift from when she’d returned from their first expedition to Australia. Throwing away the get well card that had gone with it, he tucked the seal under one arm and kept digging. A spare pair of her glasses was found in another drawer, and he put them on even though they hurt his eyes. One of her Pachimari keychains? He might give that one to Hog later. MIGHT.  
  
Hog had appeared in the room with him at some point, watching him as he rooted through her belongings. And even while the younger junker tore through the place yet again, Hog grunted once and nodded upward, and suggested he take the stars too.  
  
Riiiiight, the stars! Mei’s glow in the dark stars on the ceiling. How could he have forgotten those? They’d spent how many nights under those things? Fucking idiot that he was, forgetting about something important like them. Good thing Hog was around to remind him of these things, since Mei wasn’t. Lucky he was so tall he didn’t have far to reach, and he promptly started shucking them off one by one, throwing them onto the ground to collect later.  
  
Roadhog watched in silence.

 

* * *

 

  
Her files had requested cremation, and Junkrat didn’t like it. The one fucking thing in this shitty world he’d wanted to keep and never wanted to burn, was burning. They’d take her out of one box and put her in another, and she’d fade and burn and pressurize into nothing but a heap of ashes and scraps of charred bone. He bet that even her ashes and bones would be the most beautiful things in the world. Like little jewels, too precious for even him to steal. So why were they wasting her beautiful ashes and bones? Throwing them out into the wind of her ‘favorite places’? Utterly mental, it was.  
  
The worst part was that they wouldn’t let him go out on missions. Emotionally charged, they said. Liability, they said. Not ready, they said. Fuckers. They were wasting perfectly good anger, leaving him to waste away on the base when he’d much rather be out blowing things up. Scrapping target bots was no fun. Not when he wanted to be out there killing Talon agents. That’s what he wanted most, was to track down every single Talon agent left on the planet and kill them the way they deserved to be killed. And if he found the ones that had hurt his poor Mei, it wouldn’t be pretty. He didn’t know much about torture. Wasn’t patient enough for something like that. But if he found them, he wanted it to be slow. Lingering. Painful. Maybe he could pay Hog to twist their limbs off one by one, or come up with something to burn them alive like his Mei was burning in that little chamber right now.  
  
Ana had taken him aside and asked him if he was all right. She was a good egg, best nan, one of his favorites. He could trust her well enough. So he said that no, he wasn’t all right. And thankfully she hadn’t tried to offer him any shite about comforting words or being in better places. She’d just nodded, told him she understood, and said she had something for him later. He wondered what that was about, and hoped he could remember to ask her.  
  
Doctor Angelface had given him sleeping pills, since he hadn’t slept in a while. Worse than usual, really. But he didn’t want to take them. He spent his nights alone while Hog slept, puttering over his projects or keeping himself busy. The stuffed seal lay un-cuddled on his bed, along with the mound of Mei’s snowflake blankets, and her stars were crooked and askew, hanging from pieces of tape on his ceiling. Their glow looked a little dull to him. Strange. They’d always seemed a lot brighter in her room.  
  
At some point Roadhog must have slipped the pills in his boba. Or maybe he collapsed out of exhaustion. Probably Hog’s fault, though. He woke up drooling on Mei’s pillow, burrowed in Mei’s blanket, curled around Mei’s stuffed seal. Everything felt foggy and slow and he hadn’t dreamed of anything. Or maybe he had, and he’d forgotten them. He forgot a lot of things. That’s why he had to keep everything of hers that he could, so he wouldn’t start to forget those too.  
  
Ana found him again, since he’d forgotten about her too. She gave him a little package and said it was only right for him to decide what to do with it, putting a little parcel into his flesh hand and folding his long fingers over it. He asked her what it was and what he was supposed to do with it, but she merely shook her head and said that this was something he had to decide on his own. She couldn’t help him with this one. He snapped something impatient back at her, but she merely turned and walked in the other direction. When he looked again, he saw the writing on the little paper container and nearly dropped it.  
  
What was he supposed to do with Mei’s ashes, anyway?

 

* * *

  
  
Shamefully, he had to admit that his very first thought was that he should eat them. The second thought was that that would be absolutely disgusting, even for him, and wasn’t sure where that thought had even come from. Maybe he was still just tired. Or maybe that was the only way he could figure out for them to be close anymore. Still, that idea was off the charts. A no-go. Or, at the most, it would be Plan C.  
  
Roadhog told him that some people kept ashes in their homes, in a vase. But he didn’t have a vase, he’d probably break one even if he did, and he wasn’t sure how he felt about just leaving her there…in some cold urn, all by herself. Couldn’t leave her like that, no. Parts of her were already scattered all over. Winston had taken her on her last tour of China, and now she was out there in parts of Xi’an, across the Gèlādāndōng Fēng, the Tianzi Mountains, and places he didn’t even know. All those places sounded pretty lonely and cold to him. And it had always been his job to warm her up.  
  
Maybe he could warm up this one little part of her, and put a bit of her in the best and warmest place he knew of. But then…Didn’t she hate Australia? She’d never had an easy time of it there. Neither had he. But it was still home and still his most favorite place in the world. And maybe she wouldn’t mind being in a place where it was always hot and sunny, since it was such a little bit of her and she was just a pile of ashes anyway.  
  
He asked Roadhog what he thought and received a shrug. But the more he thought about it, the more he liked it. Even though it was a stupid thing to do, and she was just ashes. But lots of things were ashes in the Outback, so maybe she’d mix right in with the sand and be warm forever. Maybe she’d reach whatever place they’d been in the desert when he’d first kissed her, or looked up at the stars, or rooted for the first time. Not that he could remember where those locations had been, but Mei was one clever cookie and an expert navigator, so she’d probably be able to find her way there. Or maybe she’d be swept up into one of the red storms and rain down fire and vengeance if she was mad at things, since she was often mad at things but would never really say why. Maybe she could be like some sort of angry Chinese ghost that haunted Australia’s weather patterns, that’s what she would be. He liked the thought of it more and more.  
  
Even though Winston hesitated when the request was made, Junkrat was granted two tickets back to Oz.  
  
When he arrived and the door opened, and the molten heat poured over him and the little precious parcel held in both hands, he knew this was a great idea. Tucked into Hog’s chopper as he’d been so many times before, the two made quick work of the Outback’s cracked highways, heading deeper into the desert that both called home. Roadhog didn’t seem particularly bothered that Rat had absolutely no destination in mind. They were used to wandering. So that was what they did, for several days.  
  
It was almost like the true ‘old days’, when the junkers had meandered from nowhere to nowhere, topping off at junker petrol stations and occasionally getting into a little tussle with old rivals. But throughout it all, even though his mind wandered, Junkrat held fast to the little bundle with her name on it.  
  
Until one day, driving through what used to be the ol’ Chilla Well near Alice Springs, Junkrat screamed to stop. So Roadhog pulled over, and the younger junker scrambled out of his sidecar, pressed his mechanical hand above his brow to shield his eyes, and peered around in all directions. The long, red desert stretched out in all directions, flat and sandy save for the buttes that rose up and stood against the blue of the sky. Scrubby brownish-green shrubs dotted the blasted landscape, and the sun beat down until it hurt. This was the place. She could go to wherever she needed from here, and never be cold.  
  
He tried to remember if she’d told him anything about Chinese funeral rites, but he couldn’t recall. And he was fairly certain she wouldn’t have been impressed by what junkers called a funeral. He wasn’t big into funerals anyway. So at a loss as to what else to do, he told Roadhog to say something.  
  
Roadhog thought for a very long while before saying, “She was good.”  
  
Junkrat could agree with that.  
  
When the next breeze came, he opened up the box and shook it. A little puff of gray was expelled from within, seized by the desert winds and taken off towards the northwest, until it had mixed with the red and he couldn’t tell it apart anymore. And then she was gone. Mei was gone and was all over the world and she was never coming back.  
  
But at least she’d be warm.

 

* * *

  
  
That night, they roasted lizards and ate beans out of the can like they used to do. But it didn’t feel right anymore, and Junkrat’s laughter didn’t sound like it should have. It kept breaking in odd spots and turning back on itself until it was almost like sobbing, but not really. Crying had never done him much good and was just a waste of water, after all. Roadhog seemed more muted than ever, which was genuinely a hard thing for most to imagine, and announced quietly that he was going to bed early, since he was tired and they had a long few days of driving ahead to get back to the rest of Overwatch.  
  
Junkrat finished his half-eaten tin of food before getting up, gathering up his bedroll, and leaving the yellow glow of their campfire. Instead he moved off into the night, where the red desert met black night and turned the world into shades of purple and blue. Kicking open the roll onto the open sand on the crest of a tiny dune, he flopped down onto his back and stared upward. Nice, clear night. Lots of stars. Lots and lots of stars. She’d always been dazzled by the stars out here, and he pretended to like them too, even if he was watching her more than he was watching them.  
  
But now, looking up at them, they were very pretty. Now that she was out here, she could look at them every night, any time she wanted.  
  
He felt water draining down from his eyes, down over his temples, and cursed a little as he scrubbed it away with the back of his bruised knuckles. Damnit.  
  
The stars glimmered above him, the dusty clouds of the milky way stretching across the abyss of the open sky. Mei had explained it all to him, how the dust wasn’t sand, but fathomless multitudes of rocks and pieces of star stuff. They were balls of raging fire and gas so large and so bright that they could eat up the sun, and they were seeing their light from billions upon billions of miles and light years away. How the gravity of these immense things could pull itself in until it burnt out and nothing but pits of hungry black remained. Like his stomach, she had laughed. Sometimes, they went supernova in the greatest, most explosive force in the universe. Something that someone like him couldn’t even imagine. And that sometimes, the dust from these stars and these deserts and her body, would all be gathered up in some void until a spark lit everything up and a new star was born from it all. She’d said that the real things were nothing like the little shapes that glowed in the dark on her ceiling.  
  
His eyes kept watering and it made it hard to look at all those stars.  
  
Their glow looked a little dull to him. Strange. They’d always seemed a lot brighter in her room.


	9. Metal Flowers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (The other version of Glow in the Dark)

The attack had blindsided their defense from the left, where Mei and Junkrat had been positioned. One moment everything had been normal, and then the next, everything had turned to fire and pain and hot metal. Junkrat had gone down first, and Mei had thrown up one of her walls to protect them. But not even her ice could stand the barrage, and the last thing she could remember was her screaming for him to hang on, just hang on. She was going to get them through this. Covering her body with his, she felt something collide hard with the side of her head, and after that she couldn’t remember anything at all.

She awoke over a week later in the intensive care unit. She’d had more than her fair share of unpleasant awakenings, but this one had to rank up there. Everything hurt, but she had lived, so her protective ice must have done its job yet again. She would just have to rest and be stuck in the clinic again. She reached for the little buzzer near the bed, summoning Angela to her side. Dr. Ziegler seemed relieved that she was awake and well, taking her hand and squeezing it before puttering about with the IV drips and various devices stacked around her hospital bed. But the doctor was oddly silent, and Mei figured she was likely busy with other patients.

Other patients like Jamison. Where was Jamison? The bed next to hers was empty, and Mei sighed softly and asked where he was and when he would be coming to visit. Likely he’d caused enough trouble that they’d quarantined him to his own personal med ward again. But now that she was awake, she hoped he had fared a little better than her, and wanted to see him.

But Angela said that Jamison wasn’t going to be coming, and paused for a very long time as if searching for other words to say. Mei did not like that at all. So instead she asked, maybe when she was stronger in a day or two, she could go see him instead? No. Angela denied her yet again, and instead placed a gentle hand over hers. Why was she doing that? Why was her expression like that? Shouldn’t she be happy that they were doing better? Why couldn’t she go see him? Mei heard her own tones go from asking, to pleading, to utter desperation. She had to see him. She had to see him, please. Let her go see him. But some part of her already knew that it wouldn’t do any good. No amount of begging would let her see him. And she knew why, even though she wished she didn’t.

Angela stopped her when she started trying to climb out of bed, and in her sad and gentle way, confirmed what she already knew. Jamison was gone. His wounds had been too great, and while she had been sleeping, he had slipped away. While she was sleeping, death had passed her over and taken someone she had loved instead. While she was sleeping, he had not been able to escape the curse that followed her. Everyone she loved died, and every time she woke up, it got worse and worse.

When she slept, bad things happened.

* * *

 

Mei’s silence was far more devastating than any amount of crying. She’d always been easy to laugh and easy to cry, and to Jamison’s delight, had always been easy to anger and easy to fluster as well. Even she would admit that she cried a little more often than she would have liked. When anything remotely sad or heart-wrenching happened, she cried. When animals or kids got into dangerous situations in movies, she cried. When lovers were torn apart by drama in her favorite books, she cried. And there was one video that Jamison had always tormented her with, which was just a bunch of baby goats in sweaters romping over a farm field, which always made her burst into tears because ‘they were so happy’. Seeing Mei’s face as red as a tomato and covered in tears was hardly an unusual thing for everyone on base.

It was far more unnerving to see her so small and pale and blank-faced, sitting in her wheelchair and staring out a window, reduced to depressive catatonia. She was still quite lucid, and answered questions as softly and politely as usual. She let herself be wheeled about while her leg and the rest of her healed, and never forgot to say please or thank you. But though she tried to smile at all the attempts to cheer her up, it never reached anything beyond a half-hearted and distracted twist of her lips. Her gaze remained downcast and far away, barely visible over the shadows under her eyes that were getting darker by the day.

She hadn’t been sleeping well. If she slept, someone else might die.

Her friends, both old and new, showered her with gifts and cheer. Zarya had taken her wheelchair out for a stroll around the grounds for some fresh air, boisterously telling her stories and strange jokes that honestly didn’t translate very well from Russian, but Mei didn’t really hear them. Angela made an attempt to put together a menu of her favorite things and tried to get her to eat, but even vitamin-fortified dumplings and nutrient-enriched soups did little to stir an anemic appetite, and she barely picked at them. Winston spent hours at her bedside, coaxing her with cards or word games or her favorite shows, even though he would eventually fall into much-needed sleep almost every time. Lucio’s personalized mix of healing music sat on her tablet, the files unopened. Not even the one entitled ‘J-Man’ that he had put together in honor of the late Jamison Fawkes. The only gift she had made much use of was the knitted blanket that Ana had made for her, after she had told her she was feeling cold.

She had come out of Antarctica and the cold had lingered inside her, sometimes taking her out of her body and her mind, until she would freeze. Sometimes literally. And there she’d remain, trapped by ice and dark thoughts. And the only thing that could truly break through that ice…was fire. Though her introductions to the junker had been contentious at best, he’d battered down every wall she threw up, melted her cold defenses, and exploded into her life despite all her best efforts. Eventually (VERY eventually) she had finally come to embrace his fiery and madcap nature, and had fallen for him as well.

They had melded together surprisingly flawlessly after that. She cooled him down when he got too hot, and he kept her warm and protected from the cold…which was a foolish notion, in the end.

She never should have relied on a flame to keep her warm. Eventually, they always burned out.

* * *

 

The junker had never been good about keeping his personnel files in order, and apparently had not filled out anything for his last wishes or any form of will, and ‘returning’ him to the hostile government of Junkertown had been vetoed right out. So they had gone forward with a traditional funeral for lack of any better ideas. They had flowers and ribbons, though none of that seemed in keeping with his character, so D.Va and Lucio had decorated the bouquets with the shells of his smiley-face bombs, which made it a little better. Mei didn’t notice any of it. Dressed in mourning white, her bad leg still confining her to her wheelchair, she sat and she stared at the open part of the casket. The ruffled cloth around him was ridiculous, and if he had been awake, he would have definitely made fun of it. But he wasn’t. He wasn’t going to wake up. Instead he just lay there, his usually warm skin a ghastly pallor of gray blue that no amount of funerary make-up could disguise. His eyes were closed and he was wearing a shirt and tie and they had tried to style his hair and he wasn’t smiling.

It was barely Junkrat at all, just a cold shell long since abandoned. Like her friends and companions had been, too. All of them, cold and empty and locked in boxes or tubes, to be left behind and forgotten.

They lowered him into the hole they’d made at the military graveyard nearby. The clean white headstone read ‘Jamison Fawkes’ and ‘??? - 2084’ since nobody, including Junkrat himself, was precisely sure when he had been born. It was an unusually warm day, fitting for a man who had loved the heat, but Mei sat under her blanket and still felt cold. The funerary chaplain read something suitably non-denominational, but she didn’t pay attention. And while she was distantly aware that some of his closer friends were crying around her, she still had no tears to shed. She sat there, staring at the hole in the ground where he was being ‘laid to rest’, and briefly pondered joining him in it.

She kept reverting to that icy tomb in her mind, more and more. Jamison was no longer there to wrap his arms around her and tease her or distract her or make her laugh. The warmth that radiated off his body would never be pressed against her again. And his little habits of biting on her neck or her ears to ‘bring her back’ were gone with him. She missed it. She missed him. Even all the annoying things she’s scold him for, she missed those so much. His forgetfulness and unpredictability and tendency to smear soot everywhere…What would she give for just one more moment with him, standing on her tip toes and wrapping her arms around his chest because he was too tall, and telling him he was stinky, and arguing with him over something stupid yet again…She missed arguing with him. She missed everything about him. She missed him so badly that it hurt to think of him. So instead, she would just sit there numbly, and stare at nothing, and think of nothing too.

And mostly, she let it happen. Because too often, her thoughts would inevitably wander back to her wishing that she had died with him. And those were bad thoughts to have, weren’t they? Here everyone was, full of light and happiness and trying their best to bring her back to her old self. Her friends still loved her and wanted her to live. But their light and their love was nothing compared to his fire, and no matter how they tried, she still just felt cold.

Angela had tried everything, but Mei’s progress was agonizingly slow. Her wounds had mostly healed but she remained frail. She’d seen it happen too many times. Grieving was one thing, and could cause sickness to linger. Mei’s grieving and guilt had been intense when she had returned from Antarctica, but she had gotten through it. But this was no longer just grief. There were times when a patient simply gave up, and no amount of medical knowledge would help, when living or dying no longer mattered to them. She barely slept or ate or bathed, and merely existed in her little corner, silent under her blankets and alone with nothing but distant echoes of sorrow, and every day she slipped further away into the numbness that had become her world. Even her number of visitors slowly lessened, as life went on and nothing seemed to affect her. Even her best friends no longer thought they could help her.

…Until there was one particular person who arrived, who had not visited her before.

* * *

 

Roadhog had barely seemed to react to his younger partner’s death. The pig-masked man had always been a hard read, but he showed no signs of grief or sadness. He had been in the waiting area when Junkrat had first slipped away, and was the first to receive the news. He had nodded once, bowed his head to Angela in farewell, gotten up, and left. And when someone was finally sent to find him again, he was gone. They had eventually tracked his progress to him simply walking off the base, into the city, and catching a civilian flight back to Australia. After his arrival into his homeland, he had utterly vanished. He had missed the viewing, and the funeral, and everything else. Without his younger charge keeping him here, some wondered if he was going to come back at all.

That had been weeks ago. Just as abruptly as he had left, Roadhog had returned. Ignoring Winston’s and 76’s attempts to berate him, he lumbered back into the base with no fanfare, slinging the heavy pack off his back and physically throwing the cleaning bot out of what had been his and Junkrat’s rooms. No bots, he had said, and shut the door behind him. A few hours later, cutting off the requests for meetings and explanations, he left the dorm and headed for the south bay viewing window where Mei usually lingered for most of the day. Just as expected, she was there, sitting in her chair and staring out at the ocean, pretending that was what she was watching.

He greeted her with a grunt, and for the first time that day she actually noticed anything enough to respond. The old junker had expected a little anger and likely well-earned resentment for his absence, but received nothing but a mildly surprised ‘welcome back,’ before she turned away. Even behind the glass of his mask’s lenses, he saw the look in her eye…or rather, that there was no look in her eye. The spark there had all but faded was was left blank and dull. He knew that look well. He’d seen it in others. And in the mirror.

He might have told her that he knew what she was feeling. He could have told her everything. Including the parts about his wife, and his daughter, and his family, and how he had killed them and everybody else. He could have told her about the days when he was Mako instead of Roadhog. And how losing everything made you lose yourself too. But what good would that have done for either of them? He was a private man, and nearly everyone on the base had some sort of tragic incidents in their past. Just knowing of his own torment would have done nothing to lessen her own. Maybe he would save that for another time, if ever.

Instead he told her that he had something for her, took her chair and began to wheel her off. For the first time in a while, she stirred a bit, and asked him where he had been. He had gone back to Australia, to take care of some things and find something that Junkrat had told him to find. He had found it, and told her as much. From then on, there was a small list of things to wrap up and petty vengeance to finish, and then he had come back. To finish the last thing Junkrat had wanted.

He took her down into the laboratory sector of the base, down to the very, very bottom where Junkrat’s former workshop had been cordoned off. Still filled with live explosives, Overwatch hadn’t quite gotten around to cleaning it out yet. Few were allowed in here, but Roadhog and Mei had never been turned away. Even after he was gone, it was the same, and the locked doors opened to their keycards. Hog held up a finger for her to wait, then stepped inside. Mei watched dully, though one brow slowly lifted as she watched him swiftly dismantle two traps, a noise alarm, and a hidden concussive blast panel hidden under a rug, before he finally took her inside.

The old junker searched amongst the absolute melee of trash and chaos that his former partner preferred, and finally came up with a simple cardboard box with the words SECRET: FUCK OFF sharpie’d on the side. Opening it up to check inside, he nodded and then held it out to Mei, telling her that Jamison had meant it for her. She gently denied this. Junkrat had never finished his will, and hadn’t left her anything. Roadhog snorted, rolled his eyes at that particular thought, and just held out the box. Curiosity stirring from somewhere out of her numb state, she took it, and looked inside.

Inside was a tattered piece of curtain cloth, hiding a tangle of metal that had been welded together in the shape of a flower. Several of them, actually, laid out on top of each other, and two of them were unfinished. Very slowly, uncertainty evident, she went to lift one of them out and inspect it. She recognized it as once. It was a painstakingly made scrapmetal peony, her favorite flower. The numerous petals must have taken hours to sculpt on each one, and he had made several of them.

Roadhog said that Rat had made her a bouquet of metal roses once, on one of his many bids to impress her. But once he’d sniffed out that her favorite blooms were not roses, but peonies, he had binned the whole lot of them and started all over again. Working by pictures on the internet, or occasionally pinching a real bloom from a florist shop where he could, he had been working on this new project for months…when he could remember to. He’d told Hog to remind him whenever he could. It was supposed to be done in time for her birthday, after all.

Mei quietly lifted each of the metal peonies, delicately inspecting them. He hadn’t been able to finish all of them, and one of them was…downright bizarre? The stem was hollow, and there was a strange gap behind the face of the petals. Glancing down into the box, Hog sighed. He hadn’t been able to talk Rat out of that idea, and that particular flower was supposed to explode on a timer device once the box was opened. At least he’d been able to convince Rat to use glitter instead of gunpowder. Mei turned the boobytrap peony around and around in her fingers, and uttered a noise that was almost a laugh. Only someone like Junkrat would ruin his own beautiful handmade birthday gift by turning it into a bomb. Only him. She laughed, and it turned into a choked little sob that she cut off quickly. She didn’t know why, but her fingers started tightening around the metal flower, her hands beginning to tremble. The petals squeaked and bowed as her grip tightened, until the metal could no longer yield and one of her fingers slid the wrong way and sliced open along a sharp edge.

She hissed aloud, and Hog almost went to reach for her. But she only loosened her grip and watched as several droplets of bright, bright red blood oozed down her finger and onto the metal peonies below.

  
It felt…warm.

  
Her dull expression warped and shifted, into something stricken. Hugging the box to her chest, she bent double until she was curled over it, and her shoulders began shaking. Tears started to patter on top of the drips of red, and she uttered several scraping, gasping whimpers. And suddenly she was just crying, her chest heaving in convulsing dry sobs that tore themselves out of her again and again.  
Hog stood towering over her in awkward silence, eventually reaching out with one gigantic hand to place it on her back, patting her gently.

She looked up at him, her glasses askew and smeared with water, streaming from red-rimmed eyes. She could barely even manage to choke out her words.

“I miss him. I miss him…”

He nodded and waited for the flood to subside. Scrubbing at her face, she sniffled aloud, hiccuping and then apologizing for hiccuping. Hog visibly relaxed. That was more along the lines of what he was used to from Mei. She gingerly picked up one her metal peonies, its form blurred through her streaky glasses. She’d buy something to put them in, and then put them on her dresser. Maybe she could frame some of their photos from their time together and put them next to it. Next to the pictures of her team from her Antarctica expedition, and the pictures of her mother, and her father…and everyone else she had lost along the way. Put them all together, clustered around the bouquet of metal flowers he had made for her.

She started to try and rise, wincing as her leg sent a lance of pain as a reminder of its state. She still had healing to do. Easing back into her wheelchair, she asked if Roadhog was going to be busy. Probably later, he would be, after the higher-ups had finally cornered him. But not yet. It was a long way to wheel herself to the cemetery, and she asked if he would not mind going with her. Maybe…they could talk, on the way over? Even though it might hurt her throat, to suddenly be talking again. But he said he would, and grasped the handles of her chair to start guiding her out of the lab. Maybe on the way over, they could stop and get some flowers so that she could put them on his grave. She was keeping her metal bouquet…but maybe they could buy him some peonies?

The old junker grunted and nodded, and pushed open the door to the outside with his elbow, pulling her chair after him. Wheeling her across the base’s yard and towards the gates, Hog headed for the graveyard. He didn’t know where the exact spot was, but they could find it. They’d always been good at finding him. Mei clung tightly to the box in her lap, looking down at the way the metal glinted and caught the light. It was a very bright day, after all…and maybe she was a little overdressed for this place.

Maybe she even felt a little warm.

She pushed her blanket to the side and faced the sunlight.


	10. Operation: Miracle Prawn - Pt 2

Roadhog dreamed of sand and fire, and swimming in a giant jar of pickle juice in the middle of the end of the world. Dreams were strange things. Probably shouldn’t have tried to take a nap while he was hungry. But then, he was often hungry and often tired. Inside his dream, a gigantic metal hand with a grinning mouth on its palm started banging on the glass of the jar, and it sent shockwaves through his brine aquarium and disturbed the pickles, sending them scattering. Damnit. He’d wanted to eat one of those-  
  
“Roadie! Roadie, wake your big arse up! I’ll fuckin’ blow up your bed if I got to! Again!” Junkrat’s metal fist was banging dents into Hog’s bedroom door, although there was a little commotion a moment later and what sounded like Mei scolding and trying to drag him away. Still, he was yelling. “Swear it, mate, get up! There’s an emergency!”  
  
“Don’t tell him that!” Mei’s voice protested. “It’s not an emergency!”  
  
Roadhog groaned as his afternoon nap was interrupted yet again, peeling away the oxygen tubes from his face and soon replacing it with the trusted leather pig mask. Grumbling and scratching at where his overalls nearly sagged off his rear, he lumbered to his door and slowly opened it, looking down into Junkrat’s wildly grinning face and Mei’s embarrassed one.  
  
“Hrrghm?” he said, squinting down at them.  
  
“You’re never gonna guess it. Never ever. Try it, though! Heh, guess what! Guess!” The younger junker giggled wildly into both hands, and Roadhog waited for a few seconds, knowing Junkrat would never give him the time to actually guess. A moment later, Rat burst into wild laughter and pulled Mei up against him, all gleaming eyes and teeth and joy. “I told you you’d never fucking guess! Guess who’s got two thumbs and the most viable sperm this side of the Outback! This bloke, right here!” He jabbed both thumbs towards himself proudly, still beaming.  
  
Mei covered her face briefly, turning pink.  
  
Roadhog paused as he processed that one, then suddenly leaned very heavily on the door, head tilting down towards them. “Hgghrrrm?” he asked, lifting his chin towards Mei.  
  
She looked up at him, smiling sheepishly. “Only four weeks, I found out this morning. But he wanted you to be the first one we told.”  
  
Junkrat wrapped his arms around her and smashed his cheek into the top of her head adoringly, messing up her bun yet again. “You’re gonna be an Uncle Roadhog! Think of that! I know that wasn’t part of our contract, but I’m sure we can work in a new clause. For _family_ , after all!”  
  
She coughed a little, but she was still smiling rather uncontrollably, cheeks fully dimpled. “He’s…still excited. We both are. I mean, we’re excited but also terrified. A lot terrified, actually. But also excited. But terrified. But also-”  
  
“Is it good?” Roadhog asked suddenly, and she could feel his gaze piercing through her even from behind his glass lenses.  
  
There was that question again…  
  
Mei’s brows knitted as she looked between the two junkers, and wondered precisely just how bad it had been, what they had seen in wastelands of the poisoned Outback environment. What had happened to those babies, where they were from? That had been both of their immediate reactions, was to assume the worst. She could feel herself start to deflate a little, but Junkrat uncoiled from his serpent-like grip around her and faced down his larger partner, hands on his bony hips. “Damned right it’s a good one, mate! Gonna have all its limbs, two eyes, a nose, all its teeth, all the right sizes, no extras! My own l’il prawn, s’gonna look just like me, and just like Mei too!”  
  
He looked over to Mei again, and cocked his head slowly. “Mm. Hope it’s good.”  
  
“Yeah! We got us a real doc, not a junk clinic butcher. None of that slapping metal bits on if it’s missin’ them. Doc Angelface will know what to do if it starts breaking. Which it won’t! S’gonna be good, parts-wise, brain-wise, all that, you’ll see.”  
  
“…Okay…” Hog said, seemingly unconvinced.  
  
She squinted between them. She could understand nervousness, but…What sort of way was that to greet the news of a baby? Junkrat’s enthusiasm on the subject hadn’t waned, at least, but even he had taken no small amount of convincing that the baby was ‘good’ and wasn’t ‘broken’. On some level, she would never be able to understand the junkers and their way of seeing the world; from out of a desert where parts were expensive and life was cheap, and the news of a new life coming into the world wasn’t met with just trepidation, but genuine dread that a  life might end up being worse than death.  
  
She deflated just a bit, and Junkrat wrapped both bony arms around her so she didn’t droop. Holding her against his chest, his manic energy was still running wild and he could not stop himself from rocking back and forth from foot peg, and rocking the girl in his arms with him. Back and forth, side to side. “Fuck’s sake, mate, give my girl a congrats at least! Congratulate me too! Gonna have a whole litter of little rats, me n’ her!”  
  
Frankly, a litter of tiny Junkrats sounded positively nightmarish to Roadhog, and judging by the look on her face, to Mei too. Still, he shook his head and reached down to place one massive hand on her head, lifting it carefully up and down to pat her.  
  
“Congratulations,” he said, “Sorry it’s this one’s.”  
  
Junkrat beamed and enveloped her further into his arms’ serpentine grip. “Piss off, Roadie! Er well, don’t actually piss off, might need you to watch the anklebiters at some point. Say, d’you know much of anything about kids? Heh! Stupid question, ain’t it? Asking the One-Man Apocalypse if he knows anything about baby-rearin’! Hehehe!”  
  
Roadhog said nothing, turning away from his younger partner’s giggles.  
  
Mei’s brows knitted slightly, squirming a bit to loosen the junker’s grasp around her and turn the conversation back on track. “Um! S-so! So! We just wanted you to know…Mr. Roadhog, maybe we should come back later when you’re not still waking up?”  
  
“…Yeah,” he said.  
  
Junkrat scowled slightly. “Oi! But we was gonna ask him-”  
  
There was a pressure on his chest rather suddenly, and Mei was physically pushing him away from Hog, who was still leaning on the doorframe. He was going to demand an explanation, but she was shaking her head and giving him a rather strange look. One of those ‘Don’t question it, just do it’ looks, so he didn’t question it and just did it. Stumbling slightly into walking alongside her, he draped one arm back about her shoulders as she turned to glance back one last time at the other man.  
  
“We can come back later, okay? Just give him a few moments, it’s a lot to take in, remember? Besides, how about we go tell some of the others now?”  
  
There was the sound of a slamming door behind them as Roadhog vanished back into his room. Junkrat, baffled, looked up at the noise and then back to Mei. “Huh? Why would…Er. Yeah! Yeah, arright! Wanted to see Hana’s face when I tell ‘er anyway, bet she spits her soda out clear across the room.”  


* * *

  
  
“ _I’M PREGNANT, LADIES N’ GENTS!_ ” Junkrat slammed the door open, sliding in as his peg leg screeched his momentum to a halt.  
  
Hana spat her soda out clear across the room, arcing several feet away in a wide spray that drenched Lucio sitting next to her.  
  
“Ah, man!” Lucio shrieked, looking down at his ruined shirt in dismay before he quickly began fussing over and patting Hana’s back while she coughed and choked for air. Still whomping her on the back, he looked up and gave the beaming junker a rather shocked look. “I mean, uh, hey, congrats? Hana says congrats too! Give us a sec!”  
  
“Oh god it burns!” Hana sputtered, wiping at her watering eyes and snotty nose where the sting of soda in her sinuses was still leaking out. Squinting through her tears, she looked up at him with a baleful suspicion. “Are you messing with us?”  
  
Junkrat grinned even more maniacally than usual, his teeth almost breaking apart from the rest of him. “Ain’t it great news!”  
  
“You literally just barged into my room and yelled that you’re pregnant, give me a second here!”  
  
Junkrat paused, thinking for a long moment. “Wait, is that what I said? No! No, I mean _we_! I mean, _her_! Me n’ Mei!”  
  
“No, I assumed that part!” She coughed a little more, patting her chest as Lucio soothingly rubbed her back. “Are you messing, though? Uh, no offense, Jamison, but didn’t you say you couldn’t? During one of your TMI sessions where you and Lucio started describing yourselves _in detail_?”  
  
Lucio smiled sheepishly, holding up both hands in plaintive defense. “Hey hey, I didn’t know you were in earshot! It’s a guy thing. I just forgot J-Man doesn’t have a ‘low volume’ setting.”  
  
Junkrat kept talking, indeed seeming to be stuck in his ‘high volume’ setting at all times. “No no no, it’s for real! She went in for a checkup, and Doc Angelface says there’s a little prawn floating around inside her! Never woulda guessed it, meself,” he said, hooking his teeth over his lower lip and looking smug. “Guess it’s all on account of me and my _incredibly_ viable sperm!”  
  
“Okay, first off, _ew_ ,” Hana wrinkled her nose. “Second, you said Dr. Ziegler confirmed it herself? Oh wow, that is…That’s actually big news then. Mei’s pregnant, really?”  
  
“Strewth!” Rat crowed. “And not to worry! It’s gonna be good, gonna have all their bits and parts, gonna be whole in the brain, and nothing on backwards! You’ll see!”  
  
Lucio and Hana glanced at each other with raised brows, then squinted back at him. The DJ shrugged, but offered a quick thumbs up to him. “Yeah, a healthy baby is a good thing, of course. How is Mei? When’s she due?”  
  
“She’s all apples, mate. Was real nervous tellin’ me this morning, real worried, kinda cute. I mean…Guess we were both surprised. Freaked out a bit when she did tell me, I’ll admit. Ya go through your whole life thinkin’ you got bodgy balls, and next thing ya know, you’ve knocked up your _also_ sterile girlfriend on a less than one percent chance, and it’s just prawns all the way down…” He trailed off a minute, thinking once more. “Think she’s happy, though. Nah, know she’s happy. She never said it out loud, but I know she wanted some mites of her own. I saw how sad she was when Angelface told her it was a no go for both of us. And now all of a sudden, this morning we found out it’s a go. She’s four weeks in.”  
  
Hana brightened, leaping off her sofa and heading to her mini-fridge, pulling out several bottles of Korean beer and tossing one to each of the boys. “축하해! Congratulations! Soooo…? Did you totally freak out when she told you?”  
  
“Hana!” Lucio grumbled, eyes darting to Junkrat as he popped open his beer. “Come on, girl!”  
  
“What? It’s a normal question! Who doesn’t freak out at something like that?”  
  
Junkrat tilted back his beer with a snicker. “Nah she’s right, I went a little loopy at first. I didn’t blow anything up, mind you! I was a real polite gent about it all, if you must know. We talked it over like two civilized folk do, decided to give it a go. Got us a real doc here for if it goes wrong.”  
  
“Wrong?” Lucio echoed,  taking a sip of his own beer. “Did Dr. Ziegler say something was wrong?”  
  
“Nah! Nah, like, ya know, if it starts getting withered or a bit of the ol’ twisted limbs,” Rat answered with casual confidence. “But it won’t! And if it does…uh…we can handle it! But it won’t!”  
  
“Why would it-”  
  
A lightbulb seemed to go off above Hana’s head, taking a hold of Lucio’s arm abruptly as if to stifle him. “Ooooh. He means a radiation thing.”  
  
Lucio nodded slowly. “Thaaaaat makes sense. Come on, J-Man, you’re not in the desert anymore. You don’t have to worry about that kind of thing much, out here.”  
  
“I know, I know! Just…that’s how it was, is all. I saw a couple of ‘em, wasn’t real pretty, I’ll tell you. I er…sort of freaked out about that part. But Mei says the same thing, it won’t be like that. And Mei’s the smartest n’ most beautiful person in the world, so she knows a thing or two.”  
  
Hana snickered, draping herself across her own boyfriend’s lap in a rather obnoxious way. “It’s so cute and so gross how smitten you still get over her. Lucio, can you promise that you’re going to still be cute and gross about me, no matter what?”  
  
He grinned and leaned down to touch noses with her in a rather tender way, muttering a little, “Especially the gross part,” before puffing his cheeks and lunging to press his lips to her forehead, blowing a loud raspberry. PFFFFBBTBTBTT.  
  
Hana shrieked a laugh and kicked, spilling beer across her stomach as she pushed him away. “Oh my god, why do I hang out with either of you? Er…hey, Jamie, you okay?”  
  
While the other two had been wrestling each other, Junkrat’s eyes had gone far off, staring into the void with a rather thoughtful expression. Lucio paused, a flicker of concern on his face as he pushed Hana up from his lap. “Hey…Hey, J-Man, listen, it’s going to be all right. We’re gonna be behind you every step of the way, and we got one of the best doctors in the world on call, and you know the whole base would totally revolt if anything bad happened to Mei. You don’t have to worry about things like-”  
  
Junkrat shook his head, turning to his friends with a look of absolute wonder. “I was just thinkin’, mates…She’s gonna get all large with the baby, ya know…?” He looked positively dreamy, bushy brows raised and a tendril of drool and beer leaking out the side of his smiling mouth. “D’ya think her tits are gonna get even _bigger_?”  


* * *

  
There was a knock at Roadhog’s door again, and he could tell it wasn’t Junkrat. Rat liked to knock with his metal fist and pounded on the metal or wood to make as much noise or possible. And the boy was tall enough that he had to duck into a lot of doors anyway, and his fist always hit near the top. This sounded like it came from the middle of the door, and was a much quieter and more polite rapping of the knuckles. That would be Mei, then.  
  
He opened it, and looked down to find the little climatologist peering up at him through her glasses, though its lenses were not as blank or as fogged as the ones on his mask. She cleared her throat softly, folding her arms behind her in an unsure way. “Mr. Roadhog, do you have a minute?”  
  
“…Yeah,” he answered, followed by a low sigh. “A minute.”  
  
“I told Jamie that I was going to Zarya’s…and I am! But I wanted to talk to you first.”  
  
She motioned him to follow her, sitting out on the gigantic, half-sagging couch with the dent in it where he alway sank down. Which was what he did now, the springs and wood creaking noisily as it took his weight. Probably not for much longer, before he’d have to order a new one. Mei sat alongside him, dwarfed even more than usual by his looming presence. She still didn’t seem sure what to say at first, before finally clearing her throat.  
  
“So…I don’t want to intrude on your business, Mr. Roadhog. I really don’t. But I’ve always noticed how you sometimes get when children are mentioned. I don’t think it’s obvious to anyone else, but I just started noticing it one day. You kind of look away and get more quiet than usual and it’s just…I guess I can’t really describe it.”  
  
Roadhog did not answer, so she continued.  
  
“I’m not going to ask about it. I can’t lie, I’ve wondered about it and I guess maybe I have suspicions, but it’s not my place to ask. But you know Jamison, he doesn’t notice things like that most of the time. That’s just how he is,” she said, offering him a little smile. “But I want you to know that even though he’s excited and he’s going to ask you about being a godparent or an uncle or involving you at all…You don’t have to say yes. I mean, I know you know that you don’t, but…” She fidgeted a bit. “You don’t need to feel pressured about anything to do with the baby. I’m going to be fine…I think.”  
  
He looked down to her slowly. “…You think?”  
  
“I’m nervous. I’m happy. I’m really, really scared,” she said, swallowing hard. “It’s everything I wanted and I was told it was never going to happen. I put that dream away a long time ago, and now all of a sudden it’s happening. But it’s not happening how I thought. And you two are just…You seem worried it’s going to be wrong. What if it’s wrong?”  
  
Hog tilted his head down at her.  
  
She rubbed at the side of her face, fumbling with her bangs. “What if it really is just an accident? And neither of us were supposed to? I mean, I’m so happy. But I’m scared too, Mr. Roadhog. I’m sorry, I don’t know why I’m putting this on you. I just wanted you to know, no matter what Jamison says, you don’t have to-”  
  
“Mei,” he said, and caused her to startle a little. He very rarely addressed her directly, with her name. “I know.”  
  
She gave a leery little smile. “Okay. Good. Um…Good. I just wanted to be sure-”  
  
“I was scared,” he said. “Everyone is at first.”  
  
“Hm?”  
  
He leaned both elbows on his knees, slumped forward. “First time I saw her, was more terrifying than the apocalypse itself. Held her, and all the fear went away. Can’t describe it. Not much good at describing things.”  
  
Mei just looked at him, surprise evident, but she opted to let him speak. But, as usual, it seemed he did not have all that much to say.  
  
“Couldn’t hold her anymore, after one bad day. But I remember. Can’t help but remember.”  
  
She lifted a hand to almost place it on his arm…but pulled back at the last moment. It didn’t seem right, this time. It didn’t seem to be what he wanted; her pity or her comfort or anything she could offer. Biting her lip a bit, she folded her hands back in her lap, looking ahead. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to…Listen, I will talk to Jamison. I mean, I won’t tell him about…I mean, I’ll just tell him that you don’t want to be bothered-”  
  
“Didn’t say that.”  
  
She looked up at him again. “Mm?”  
  
“Ana and the little man know more than me about child-raisin’…I was no good for it. Not in the end. But I know you’re scared. Rat is too. But whatever scares ya…” He lifted his masked head, filters grinding. “…I’m scarier.”  
  
She offered him a little half-smile. “You are pretty scary, Mr. Roadhog.”  
  
“Not sure I can offer more than that. Least, not with the mite. Not sure I’m ready to be an uncle. Not yet. But I can take Rat off your hands when he irritates you. And he _will_ irritate you.”  
  
Her half-smile turned into a full one. “Oh, I know. I’ve read about getting mood swings, but even on my worst day I probably won’t have as many swings as he does on a regular day.”  
  
“Heh. You say that. I saw mood swings that would make even Rat run for cover.”  
  
“Really?”  
  
“Let me know if your cravings are Chinese food. I’ll get us Chinese food,” the huge man offered, for himself almost as much as her.  
  
“Is it true that the cravings can get really strange? Like pickles with ice cream sandwiches or some such?”  
  
“Either or. The offers stand.”  
  
She smiled up at him, cheeks dimpling happily. “That’s…that’s really nice of you, Mr. Roadhog. Thank you.”  
  
He grunted.  
  
Mei stood, heading for the door. “I’ll let you get back to it. But if you do ever think you can…Maybe one day, I think you’d make a really wonderful Uncle Roadhog.”  
  
She slipped out with a final little wave, leaving Roadhog alone in his room. That was fine. The quiet would give him more time to think.  


* * *

  
  
The word spread within hours, although Mei was able to reach Zarya in time before she heard. She wanted to deliver the news in person. It had gone about as well as she could have hoped, in that Zarya was clearly conflicted with the whole idea; joyous for her friend while bemoaning its other parent. But after the initial shock had worn off, she congratulated her all the same.  
  
Hana and Lucio passed by on their way to the cafeteria, both of them offering hugs and kind words, saying how excited Junkrat seemed and how happy they were for them both.  
  
It did not take long for Ana to find her, cornering her by the main meeting area and asking for confirmation with a strange gleam in her single eye, which Pharah said was probably a cybernetic implant reflection that was already scrolling up wishlists and knitting patterns for baby things. She was only half joking, when the old woman swept Mei into a tight embrace and congratulated her, telling her to come seek her out if she needed any advice or help. Mei said she probably would be by very soon with lots of questions.  
  
Leaving the rumors to trickle where they may, she headed back towards Dr. Ziegler’s clinic. Junkrat was already waiting for her, leaping up from his waiting room chair and moving to pull her up against him, even clingier than normal.  
  
“There y’are, darl! I’ve been waitin’ here for hours, I think! Can’t be late to our first visit to the doc’s, right? Gotta make sure the miracle prawn is all ship-shape in you!”  
  
She groaned. “What did I say about the miracle prawn thing!”  
  
“That you loved it and it’s an ace name for an ace prawn?” he said slyly, lowering one long arm to rub his flesh hand atop her stomach pointedly. “Not to worry, you got months to get used to the idear.”  
  
“I’m never calling it the miracle prawn,” she vowed, looping both arms around one of his. “Are you ready to go in and read a bunch of cheesy pamphlets about being a new father?”  
  
“Too right! I’m gonna read every single one of ‘em cover to cover! Gonna order a whole bunch of ‘em and put them in my bombs so when they explode there’s lots of little pieces of paper with it, and the last thing they see is that I’m gonna be a da! ‘Spect they won’t have time to congratulate me in the heat of the moment, but y’know, it’s the details that matter.”  
  
Mei shook her head. “The way your mind works sometimes, I swear…”  
  
He grinned down at her, resting his pointed chin in her hair once more. “Naaaah, ya love it. Hope the kid inherits at least half of my unique brand of genius. Gonna get them their own scrapheap, teach them how to take things apart n’ put things back together!”  
  
“Slow down,” she chided softly. “It’s still just a cluster of cells at the moment, I don’t think it’s ready for engineering anything yet.”  
  
“Smartest cluster of cells in the world, then! Gonna teach it everything I know, and you can send it off to one of those fancy schools n’ everything. Bet it’ll be housebroken before ya know it, too!”  
  
“You don’t _housebreak_ a baby! You teach them to use th-”  
  
Dr. Ziegler swept open the door, looking to them both with a much more genuine smile than usual. “Sorry I’m a little late. Mei, Jamison, come right in. We’ve got a lot to cover, with Mei’s new medical schedule, how this will affect both of your times in the organization, and some recommended reading and classes for new parents.”  
  
She stood aside to let them pass, and Mei pulled forward, but was stopped by Junkrat’s arms still around her. She looked up, and saw a droplet of sweat roll down his temple as he stared into the cold whiteness of Mercy’s clinic. “Uh…Hey, doc, is it normal to be real happy but also be about ready to chunder absolutely everywhere?”  
  
“Don’t! Not on me!” Mei pulled away from him.  
  
The doctor smiled at them both. “More than normal, Mr. Fawkes. Actually, rather encouraging. It’s completely natural to be a tangle of emotions with something like this. For both parents. Just step inside and I’ll tell you everything about where we’re going to go from here.”  
  
“Heh…parents…Yeah, yeah, arright. Let’s go.”  



	11. She's Different

“Oi, Roadie. Did ya ever not wanna fuck someone?”

Junkrat’s voice sounded from somewhere behind Roadhog’s turned back, and unfortunately, he sounded introspective. And when Rat was introspective, it could last for hours. Strange question it was, too. And one that Hog had no desire to answer. Hog didn’t budge from his blanket, and grunted something noncommittal, hoping it would signal his obvious disinterest.

It did not work.

“I mean, I’m not saying I wouldn’t fuck her. Holy hell, would I  _ever_  fuck her. But then, s’like, I don’t wanna fuck her. Or I mean, I wouldn’t _just_  fuck her.”

Junkrat twisted atop his sleeping bag, staring up at the tent ceiling from the little cramped space he had been afforded, crammed into a corner near Hog’s enormous gut. He seemed bothered not by that, but by something else that was clearly buzzing in his brain.

“Yeah, not just fuck her. I’d cook us breakfast. Ya know, morning after sort of thing. I gotta find out how she likes her eggs. You think she’s more of a lightly toasted or a burnt bread sort of gal? Gotta say, mate, I usually end up burning the bread. And the eggs. And myself! Haha!”

Hog groaned, and Rat ignored him.

“What impresses a lady after a night full of intrepid carnal action, than a brekkie home-cooked by her own bloke? Should I buy a robe? She seems real sweet n’ shy, probably would want me in a robe instead of the full nuddie. So I’ll be in the kitchen in my robe, and I’ll turn about with two nice steamy mugs of coffee and say something like ‘Fancy meeting you here!’ or something cheeky. And she’ll laugh because it’s not fancy meeting me there at all, Roadie, after I’ve been there rooting her brains out for hours.”

Junkrat turned onto his side, then onto his other side.

“Because I don’t wanna just fuck her, want her to stay for a bit. I’ll make breakfast. And then lunch. And then dinner too, and then it’s right back to bed for another go. She could stay the whole day. And the day after. She could stay forever!”

Hog breathed out and scratched his belly, and Junkrat nodded quickly.

“I’m not saying to hold her hostage or anything, not after we’ve gone legit. She’ll wanna stay, that’s my point. And not just for the fucking. I mean, the fucking would be a big part of it, sure. But she’ll wanna stay because…because…”

Rat trailed off, sputtering a bit as if he could not really think of a reason that she would want to stay. His mind raced.

Hog would have thought it a tad pathetic if he had been awake enough to care.

“Because she’ll like me back!” he finally said. “Won’t be like the others. None of this ‘Wham, Bam, Thank you Ma’am’ nonsense. She’ll want things t’be proper. I can do proper. Pinky out when I drink and everything. Not saying it’ll be completely proper, of course. I’ll still be my winning self, make some jokes, lighten the mood. She likes to laugh. Fuck me running, she has the cutest laugh. Have you heard her laugh?”

He sighed.

“And she’s got dimples, Roadie. Real dimples! I’ve never fucked a girl with dimples. When she smiles, her cheeks go all apple and rosy and her eyes get that little crease beneath ‘em, so you know it’s real. And she’s got those little pink bow-lips. Bet they’d be real soft. Bet her whole personage is soft, ya know? Especially her tits. Fantastic tits, by the way. Her tits are a whole other subject on their own.”

He paused to think of her tits for several long moments.

“Wants to save the world or some such shite. I don’t get it, bit of a waste of time if you ask me. But if she asked me for help, I’ll save every bloody whale on the damn earth if she wants. Should I get her a whale? A stuffy, of course, not like I’d get her a real whale. Unless she wants a real one. I think I could make it happen. Heh. Hey, Roadie, you’re almost as big as a whale, you got any whalin’ experience?”

Roadhog did not answer.

“Don’t bite my fuckin’ head off, mate, was just a joke. I bet she’ll think my jokes are funny. Gotta think of some real corkers just for her. They say that ladies love a guy what can make ‘em laugh. Laugh with me, mind, not at me. She’s not that sort, not like back home. She’s sweet to everybody…Ugh, even the omnics. Poor girl, probably doesn’t know any better…I’d protect her. For her own good. She’s too sweet, can’t let ‘em get to her. I’ll blow up every goddamn bot what even looks her way.”

He growled and turned onto his back again, fist clenched.

“Sweeter than sweet, she is. Even likes sweet teas! That’s the ticket, I’ll ask her out for boba time. I’ll buy her any flavor she wants! All the flavors! I saw her havin’ a pink one. Think it was strawberry. Don’t really much care for the strawberry ones, really, but I’ll drink ten of them in a row until I taste like strawberries. She’ll want all sorts of kisses then, I’d wager. Oi, I read that if you eat a lot of fruit, it makes your cum taste like fruit. Think if I drank enough bobas, my cum would taste like strawberries? Not sure I believe it, sounds like they were just having a go at me.”

Roadhog uttered a low snore.

“Wait, gettin’ ahead of myself a bit there, anyway. Going right for the ol’ strawberry cum, that’s just like me. No no no, this is a proper lady. This is more than that. Don’t just wanna fuck her and leave. Wanna…I dunno. I wanna date her, Roadie. I wanna get to know her. I wanna know everything about her. Not just what teas she drinks or what whales she saves. Everything else, too. Wanna know her.”

He sighed, staring blankly upward into the darkness and worrying his lower lip, a red sore spot evident where he bit it most often.

“She’s different, she is. I can just tell. Makes me all woozy in the head and chest area. And tight in the shorts, of course, hehe. She might be all icy cold, but I could help warm her up. I’ll warm her up and then we can have breakfast in the morning. We can have breakfast every morning. I’m telling you now, mate, this is the start of something. Something new, and good. Something worth going legit for. She’s the start. Hell, she might be the finish. This is it.”

Hog snored again, and Junkrat huddled deeper into his cramped sleeping bag and closed his eyes.

“...Remind me to find out what her name is.”


	12. Bad Dreams

He woke up because something was wrong. His eyes snapped open, pupils dilating as they tried to focus, awakening to the dim glow from the little night light across her room. Luckily, he didn’t need light to know what had disturbed him.

Mei’s breathing had turned harsh and sharp and shallow, little guttering sounds from a rapidly rising and falling chest. She lay on her back, limbs clutched to her side and stiff as a board. She was gray and pale, and by the clamminess of the sheets where he rested his hand, she was damp with sweat. As his eyes adjusted, he could see the flicker of her eyelashes, little movements of her eyes, frantic under the lids.

It was happening again. But this time, he knew he could stop it.

“Mei! Oi, Mei! S’okay. S’okay.” He leaned over her, murmuring her name. “You’re arright, you’re arright. C’mon, Mei.”

She twitched, chin darting to the side at the sound of his voice. Her expression warped into a grimace, teeth clenched and a droplet of water trickling from the corner of her eye.

He knew what to do. At least he still had one hand, awkwardly propping himself up on the elbow of his stump, so he could bring his flesh hand and lay it flat over her chest, spreading his fingers out across her delicate collarbone. Still crooning her name, he leaned over her and coaxed her as best he could. “C’mon, c’mon, come on back, Mei. Good girl, c’mon.”

She made a horrible noise, deep and rasping, like the first breath of someone coming up for air after nearly drowning. Sucking air into her lungs, he could feel her chest inflate until it must have hurt, heaving under his fingertips. She was still stiff, nearly mortis-like, every muscle tensed and straining. Her closed eyelids flickered before her wet lashes peeled apart, and then it was her turn to try and focus.

Large, dark eyes stared up at him without recognition, looking somewhere past him. He knew his mug probably wasn’t the best thing to wake up to, all things considered. But he loomed over her all the same, breaking the sightline between her and the ceiling, and whatever else she was seeing. In the dim light, he could see her struggling, little tiny trembling movements of her pupils before she was really able to see. He could see the precise moment when she came to, suddenly snapping up to his face.

She made another noise, a strange and unsure whimper. But she’d gotten herself back, was almost there. He was glad of it.

The first time, he’d been too afraid of hurting her. Despite his wiry frame, he was so much heavier than her little body. What if he smothered her? What if he took away the air when she could already barely breathe? But now he knew what to do, knew that it was the best thing. It had worked before.

Pulling his hand away and bracing himself, he crawled over top of her, covering her body with his. Careful not to crush her, he clambered over top of her and gingerly rested his body weight atop her, more and more. She always complained that sleeping with him was too hot, but she felt so clammy and cold. So he pinned her down, heavy and solid and warm and real, and waited.

Underneath him, she breathed out, and her body relaxed and let herself be pushed into the mattress. Her arms, shaking slightly, unclenched and wrapped around him. She held on quite desperately for several long moments, burying her face into his neck as he tucked his chin over her. Her face was wet. He wished he had another hand so he could stroke her hair. She probably would have liked that. But as it was, he settled for smushing her into the bed and muttered sweet-nothings that he hoped he wasn’t mixing up with curses.

“There y’are. There y’are, darl.”

He could feel her breathing beneath him, though now her lungs labored against the weight of him instead of simply trying to breathe at all. She pulled her face free from him eventually, sighing and relaxing underneath him. Another few moments and she finally nudged him a little and muttered a little “Mmm…bènzhòng…”

He knew what that meant now. Bènzhòng. Too heavy.

He brightened. Good, now she was back enough to be grumbling at him. He pressed his lips to her forehead anyway, kissing away the sweat, and it tickled enough for her to give a weak little laugh. Good. Rolling off her, he watched her peel herself off the sheets and grope for the light. It flicked on, making both of them squint.

“Sorry,” she said quietly, scrubbing at her face with the heels of her palms, trying to clean her cheeks. “Sorry, I guess I…I wasn’t…”

“Was it the same one?” he asked.

“Yes…But I’m okay now. I’m okay.” It sounded like she was trying to convince herself more than him. And it didn’t seem to entirely work. “I’m sorry I woke you.”

“S’alright?” He reached out, plucking at a lock of her mussed hair and tangling it between his fingers.

“I think I’m going to go make some tea,” she said, pulling away.

He didn’t move after her, laying in bed as his eyes followed her carefully around the little room. Shuffling about in her yeti slippers, she filled her kettle and rummaged in her drawers, waiting until it was hissing and hot before returning to bed with a steaming cup. She didn’t drink yet, just holding it with her eyes still downcast.

“Is it okay if I keep the light on and read for a bit?” she asked, which was a silly question.

“I’ll stay up with ya.”

She shook her head quickly. “No, no. You stay up too much as is. You don’t have to stay up. But…” She bit too hard into the soft pink of her lower lip, and he wished she wouldn’t. “You don’t have to stay up, but could you just…stay?”

“Of course.”

She crawled back into bed with him, where she belonged. Setting her tea aside with a little clink, she reached instead for her tablet and her glasses. He pulled her in, wrapping long and lanky arms around her and drawing her towards the center. Pulling up pillows around them both, he remained latched about her waist, nestling in with his head resting atop her lap.

True to her word, she stayed up, reading over work and files and things to keep her awake. One hand busied itself with typing and tapping or teas, while the other moved of its own accord, gently stroking the tufted and scorched hair that he still had left. He was groggy, but stayed up with her a while longer. Just to be sure. But soon the petting and the steady in and out rhythm of her breath reassured him that all was well.

The first times, he’d stayed up with her. But she never really felt like talking about it and keeping him awake had only compounded her guilt. So he did not feel too terrible about falling back asleep. She didn’t need him awake and talking. She just needed him nearby. And that, he could do.

Mumbling a slurred pet name into her belly and tightening his grip around her, his eyes drifted shut again.

“Thank you. Good night, Jamie,” she whispered, settling back into the cozy warmth of the bed and relaxing, waiting for the morning.


	13. All Domestic n' Shit (NSFW)

There was a resounding, rattling bellow at the door as it opened and slammed shut again.

“DAAAAAAARL!”

Mei yelled back from where she was busy in the kitchen. “What!”

Junkrat’s hair entered the room before he did, one of the tips still smoldering as he peeked slowly around the corner and into the kitchen entry, until his eyes fully appeared and his pointed nose hooked around the wall’s edge. “I’ve had a day, love! A real time of it, let me tell ya! Everything’s smithereens, and I blew them up. And after a hard day’s work, a bloke just wants to sit down with a nice coldie, and a steak, another steak, and a pile of steaks…” He grinned, showing all his teeth. “That was a hint right there, that was.”

“Well I’m making dinner and I already got things started?” she answered, unphased as she puttered about by the kitchen sink. “But! It may not be steaks, but I made us some very nice looking black bean burgers, baked potatoes, and a nice salad-”

Junkrat approached the counter, so tall he had to bend over to be seen below the line of the upper cabinets. Slamming his soot-smeared palms down atop it, he stared her down. “Bean burgs? Salads? That’s it, love…I’ve had enough. I have had e-nough!”

She paused mid-chop, the carrot still under one hand. She recognized that tone in his voice. Narrowing her eyes slowly, she looked back up at him. “Oh? Is that so?”

“Strewth! A man can only take so much of this, Mei. It’s come down t’this. I hoped this day would never come.”

“Choose your next words carefully, Jamison Fawkes.”

Brown eyes met gold from across the kitchen counter. Junkrat squinted at her and she squinted back. Below her, a timer went off and Mei pressed a button on the stove without breaking their gaze, tilting her head up just a bit so she could look down her nose just as Junkrat lowered his head to furrow his wild brows all the harder. The air was thick with the scent of cooking beans and tension.

He shook his head slowly, pupils narrowing to little slits of black against citrine yellow. “S’come to this, Mei. I’m challengin’ you for superiority! Throwin’ the gauntlet!”

“That’s dangerous, Mr. Fawkes. I’m going to give you one chance and one chance only to back down.”

“Sorry, Snowflake, but it’s gotta be this way. I’m takin’ over this relationship by force if I gotta. Junkrat’s the dominant power now!”

“A foolish decision. Last chance, Mr. Fawkes.” Her hand tightened around her knife and carrot.

He lunged at her, barging around the corner and coming for her with both arms out. But Mei was already on the move, ready for him. Dropping her knife, she picked up the carrot and pointed it at the incoming junker like it was a sword, the stumpy orange veggie aimed right at him. He stopped short with a snarl, lifting up both hands with his palms out. Still wielding her root vegetable, she took a step forward, nodding towards the living room.

“Back up!”

He backed up slowly with a growl. “Ya don’t got the guts, love. We both know it.”

She jabbed the carrot at him again. “That’s where you are wrong, Fawkes. I knew you would turn on me one day. I’ve been ready. Get on that couch. Now.”

“I’ll die afore I get on that couch!”

She lifted the carrot again and said in her coldest and most fierce voice, “That can be arranged.”

“Holy hell…Ya heartless little…” He swallowed audibly, peg clicking as he backed away, until the backs of his knees hit the edge of the cushions, falling back down onto them with a huff before lifting both hands in surrender.

She had him right where she wanted him, now. Unable to stop the flush of her cheeks, she tried to smother her grin behind one hand before coughing and straightening up. “O-okay!” she said, shaking the carrot at him again. “You stay right there. I’ve got to get a…um, an implement! For your punishment!”

Leaving him sitting there, she dashed quickly back into the kitchen and rummaged through the jars before she found the one she wanted. Coconut oil. Snatching up a ladle, she oozed a portion of it into one cupped palm before hurrying back into the living room, one hand brimming with thick liquid that she tried not to spill.

Junkrat was still waiting for her, vibrating impatiently and gnawing on his lower lip, trilling one of his shrill complaints. “Mnnnrrrrrgh! Hurry up!”

She scoffed at him. “Excuse me, you’re in no position to make demands.”

“Right, right! Forgot! I meant was, you here t’torture me?”

“You brought this on yourself,” she reminded him gleefully, smile dimpling below her glasses and oil starting to ooze down her wrist. “Now take off your pants.”

For a man who had a third of his body weight made out of trash and spare parts, Junkrat could move surprisingly quickly, when he wanted to. And now was one of those times. She heard the distinctive sound of his zipper descending, a noise very familiar to her by now, and then before she even had a chance to blink, his shorts were simply gone. He was simply very abruptly nude, even if he hadn’t been wearing much clothing to begin with. Even though he was still wearing his shoe. He must have pulled them down and off his legs, since that was the only way she knew of to remove clothing. Or perhaps, in his eagerness, he had simply warped them off his body and into a state of nonexistance just to comply with her demands. Wherever his shorts were, he didn’t seem to notice or care.

He sat with his skinny legs wide apart, spread-eagled on the sofa with his growing erection arcing up against his belly, half mast. He was still biting on his lip, alive with nervous energy. “What’re you gonna do to me, darl?”

She eased down to sit next to him as she rolled the oil about in her palm. “My very worst.”

His wide, manic grin overtook his features once more.“What, make me eat your vegetarian cookin’?”

“Wh- Oh, that’s it!”

Whatever gentle ministrations she had planned at first were forgotten. She wasted no more time, reaching down to his lap and wrapping her oiled fingers around his cock, gripping her fist around his length and _squeezing_. He nearly shrieked, though it petered off into a guttural moan as his head flung back, pushing his hips up into her grip. He preferred it rougher. Rougher made him harder. A few more squeezes, combined with her starting to stroke him, soon had him fully standing to attention, clear fluid bubbling from the flared tip and trickling down to mix with the oils.

It was smoother than the motor oil he’d used to use on himself, all her organic shit. It smelled nicer, for one, like a tropical handjob. And the vicious little climatologist scowling at him and jerking her wrist up and down atop his lap felt a lot nicer than his own hands, too. He grunted at another particularly hard clench of her fingers, hissing a breath between bared teeth as he turned his smile to the ceiling.  
  
“Oh f-fuck, darl. Yeah. So mean t’me…”

“Dirty, rotten junker…” she answered breathlessly, in that cloyingly sweet-but-mean way of hers.

“H-hehehe!” He giggled madly, melting back into the cusions. He did enough creative cursing for the both of them, at least, but it was adorable to hear her try.

The oil slicked him right up, her fist still working him occasionally making little squelching noises where there was too much of it. He finally managed to drag his head back up onto his neck bones, lolling forward until his pointed chin jabbed into collarbone, eyes alight as he watched her tend to him. He sat there, bony chest heaving as she continued pumping her wrist atop his lap, little fingers sometimes adding a twist or a squeeze, or drifting up to stroke and tickle the sensitive bulb of his head.

“S-sorry I ever doubted ya! Oh, fuck me. Nngh, right there…” he growled and pushed his hips into her once more, as she nestled up under one raised arm and then looped her elbow around his neck, pulling him down insistently to kiss her. She seized his lips, swallowing whatever noise he’d been making.

It was getting to be a little intense, with her working him just the way he liked, and the scent of coconuts and kisses. Desperate to make it last, he untangled one arm from where it had started gripping the back of the cushions, jolting down and disturbing her rhythm as he clamped around the base of his cock. Groaning and cursing, he ripped his lips away. “Sh-shit! Can’t, you can’t, or I’m gonna-”

“…What if I made you?” she asked innocently, with that dimpled smile again.

His eyes widened slightly, bulging a little at the thought. Couldn’t let her know how hot that was. Had to deny it, deny her too. “Er. Ya won’t. Ya ain’t gonna make me.”

She pulled away from him, cool air bathing his cock where the warmth of her hand had once been. She tested her fingers together, still slick with coconut oil where she was supposed to be making their dinner. But sudden betrayal had forced her hand, and she knew what she had to do. Grabbing onto the top of her leggings, she hooked her thumbs beneath, and into the elastic of her panties. With a steady shimmy, she worked both of them down, over the curve of her wide hips and towards the ground.

Stepping out of them, she reached behind her to start undoing her apron, when a rather small voice rasped a “…Can y’leave it on, though?”

“Hm?”

“S’all…domestic n’ shit…” he admitted, still quiet.

It was an easy enough request, so she obliged. She reached around behind her, re-doing the bow and this time adding a knot to keep it in place. He looked a little disappointed when she pulled the straps up and off her head, though his confusion was quickly driven away when he saw why. She pulled off her top beneath it, and her bra, before sliding the apron back on. It now covered the bulge of her chest and front only in a narrow strip of cloth. She still wore the apron. Just…now she wore only the apron.

He narrowly remembered to swallow, after he’d almost begun to drool.

She set one leg near his atop the couch, pulling herself until she sat astride his lap, lifted up on both knees. Hefting up the fabric of her apron, she presented him with quite the view, and he gripped the base of his cock in his flesh hand to aim it home, his metal fingers grasping into the meat of her side to guide her downward. The coconut oil still coated him, so slick that he felt himself rub and slip along her entrance a few times before finally catching, curving upward into blissful, wet warmth as she sank down onto his lap.

Letting the apron drape down once more, their joining was hidden from his view. But he didn’t need to see it, not really, since he could feel it. She straddled him, the tips of her apron straps tickling his knees as wasted no time in starting to ride him. He had already been so close before, had only staved off cumming by the force of his own hand. But he could feel it starting to creep in and threaten him once more.

She was gonna make him cum, just like she’d said.

Mei set the pace, her calves clamping on either side of his legs as she bounced and rocked atop his cock, bracing her little hands on his chest. His long arms reached around her, plucking away the pin that held up her bun and releasing her hair to fall messy around her shoulders. The other groped along the softness of her side, fingers running along the little curves of her lower back before they found the straps to the bow. Gripping onto them in one fist, he urged her over top him, pulling her up and down.

She moaned and stuttered something that was supposed to be vaguely threatening, though he couldn’t really focus on them because he had already honed in on her little noises and gasps, above the steady slap of wet, oiled flesh. And soon even that faded, as his pulse thundered between his ears. His eyes rolled back helplessly, his cock filling her and needing to fill her with even more of him.

There was no holding back this time. He finally seized onto her with both hands, helping lift her and slam her down again. Just a little help, just a little rougher, harder… She was squeaking and sighing and her breath wafted hot across his neck as slumped forward atop him. He jerked her down onto his cock one last time, grinding her into him until he came with a strangled snarl.

Liquid heat surged up into her, painting her as his on the inside. He needed to paint her outside as well, and hunched his long spine over her prone little body as he began peppering her neck and shoulders with little bruising kisses in between his harsh, panting breaths. She rested atop him, trying to regain her composure.

“…I told you I would make you,” she whispered smugly, and bit his neck.

He managed one last, rather feeble little pulse of cum when her teeth bit down, before feeling himself falter and starting to soften. Sighing, he let himself drop back against the cushions again, dragging her with him, still inside her.

“You sure showed me, darl,” he agreed. “I was a fool t’ever doubt it.”

They lay together for a while longer, and he continued pressing little kisses along her face and throat, idly toying with the straps to her apron. His head perked up a moment later, sniffing loudly, like an animal that had just caught some sort of scent. He lifted his nose and sniffed again.

“Wait. You smell somethin’, babe?”

“If you pass gas at me, I swear-”

She sat up, straightening her glasses and sniffing as well. Her eyes shot open wide, and suddenly she was struggling to dismount him. Her flailing earned him a bit of a knee to the gut, and he ooph’d aloud as she managed to fling her legs off him and pulled away. His cock slipped out of her wetly, falling softly back onto his lap. Her bare ass, apron straps swaying, vanished back into the kitchen.

“Oh no! No no no!”

Lifting a brow, he hauled himself off the couch and, still naked, followed her in. She stood before the oven, having just pulled out a tray with two very, very well done almost-black baked potatoes atop it. Mournfully, she prodded at them with a fork, disappointment written all over face.

“I forgot! I completely forgot them, and now they’re like this. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry!”

“Whoa, whoa,” he said, draping his arms around her from behind, pulling her back into him. The potatoes didn’t matter so much to him, not at all. Not when her naked back was pressed against his front, wearing nothing but an apron, with his cum starting to drip down the inside of her thighs, and he could still smell sex over the burnt smell in the kitchen.

She craned her neck up to look at him, apologetic. “I’m sorry. I guess your betrayal distracted me and then I had to deal with that first…”

“S’alright. Ya know I like ‘em a little burnt anyhow.” He loomed tall over her, leaning to plant a wet kiss to her forehead. “Just glad you were here t’put me in my place. You know, show me what’s what, who’s the bigger bully here.”

“But the dinner…”

He started grinning again, running one set of lithe, nimble fingers down and under her apron, along the soft curve of her belly. “Personally, I dunno how you can even think of eating dinner anyway?”

“Hm?”

“…Aren’t you already full?”

It took her a moment. But when she got it, she gasped aloud and turned to start scolding him again.

He didn’t hear most of it, already starting to cackle.


End file.
